Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie yolitique et .rociale, Volume X, N. 1-2 (1986) .

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM

Maurice Charland
There was a time in this fair land When the railroad did not run ... Picture clarity and intellectual clarity are limited by electromagnetic resources.

Gordon Lightfoot

H.A . Innis

In the opening sequence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's production of the National Dream - Pierre Berton's history of the Canadian Pacific Railway - the pristine majesty of the Rocky Mountains and a lone Indian are confronted with the technological dynamo of a locomotive. This television image of a railroad as the "national dream" heroically spanning the wilderness to fashion a state reveals in a condensed narrative the manifold relations between technology and a Canada which can imagine . Here, we are encouraged to see technology as constitutive of Canada, and as a manifestation of Canada's ethos . The National Dream highlights, of course, the role of space-binding technology in Canada's history . This CBC epic reminds us that Canada exists by virtue of technologies which bind space and that the railroad permitted a transcontinental economic and political state to emerge in history . Furthermore, the National Dream is an instance of the discourse of technology in Canada, of its rhetoric. The CPR is presented as the archetypal instance of Canada's technological constitution. More significantly, the CPR is offered as the product of political will. A nation and railroad were "dreamt" of by Canada's architects and then consciously created. We see a Canada which imagined itself into existence . Canada's imagination, a Canadian imagination, is manifest by the 196

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM National Dream itself. Berton's televised history is a rhetorical epideictic for a technologically mediated Canada . This rhetoric of a technological nation, basing itself on a romantic interpretation of history, equates the construction of the CPR with the constitution of Canada and praises each with reference to the other. Canada is valorized as a nation because it is the product of a technological achievement, and the railroad is the great product of heroic individuals who dreamt a nation. Curiously, the National Dream rearticulates a rhetoric which gave rise to its own materialization . That rhetoric is offered through a product of itself, the CBC . The CBC exists by virtue of a discourse of technological nation-building, and reproduces the rhetoric which legitimates it and the Canadian state when it invites us to join Berton and dream of nationhood. In this essay, I will explore what I perceive to be a rhetoric of technological nationalism in anglophone Canada which ascribes to technology the capacity to create a nation by enhancing communication . As I will show, the rhetoric of the CPR becomes the power-laden discourse of a state seeking to legitimate itself politically by constituting a nation in its image. This is a significant rhetoric, for it underguirds Canada's official ideology and guides the formulation of federal government policy, at least in the area of broadcasting: the CBC is legitimated in political discourse by the CPR . Furthermore, I will argue that the rhetoric of technological nationalism is insidious, for it ties a Canadian identity, not to its people, but to their mediation through technology. Rhetoric and Ideological Discourse This is, then, a critical theorisation of the development of Canadian ideological discourse. With regard to the "method" of ideology-analysis, the study proceeds (1) by identifying how Canadian ideological discourse is grounded in the politics and economics of the early Canadian state; (2) by tracing out the rhetorical effect - the consequence - of that discourse on the Canadian political, economic and indeed popular mind, as it calls a certain Canada into being; and (3) by examining how this discourse creates the conditions of its own reproduction . I will demonstrate that the rhetoric of the CPR, seeking to constitute a state, becomes the rhetoric of the CBC, seeking to constitute a polir and nation. This rhetoric, the rhetoric of technological nationalism, is the dominant discourse of the official ideology of nation-building through state-supported broadcasting, and has been a significant (but not exclusive) determinant of the form of Canada's broadcasting system . It is also the dominant discourse of Canadian nationalism in anglophone Canada.

MAURICE CHARLAND While my concern is with rhetoric and its significance, I will not simply study discourse : Such an approach would numb my critique, for rhetoric is precisely the form of discourse which projects outside of itself into the realm of human attitude and action . I will take a lead from Kenneth Burke who has rightly observed that while there exists a difference between things and words about things, words provide an orientation to things.' Thus, I will examine the relationship of words to things: specifically the relationship between two distinct but intertwined entities - the Canadian rhetoric of a technological nation, and the technology of the Canadian state. Both technology and rhetoric were necessary for Canada as a "nation" coming to be, but they constituted a Canada within a spiral of contradictions. I will seek to identify these contradictions . Indeed, my claim is that the contradictions between these two have produced the recurring crises in Canadian broadcasting policy and in the quest for a Canadian "identity." Technological nationalism promises a liberal state in which technology would be a neutral medium for the development of a polis . This vision of a nation is bankrupt, however, because it provides no substance or commonality for the polis except communication itself. As a consequence, technological nationalism's (anglophone) Canada has no defense against the power and seduction of the American cultural industry or, indeed, of the technological experience. Canada, then, is the "absent nation." My analysis will take inspiration from James W. Carey's and John J. Quirk's application of Innis in their study of the rhetoric of electricity in the United States .3 I will consider how what Innis terms the "bias" of communication technology undermines the promises of that technology's rhetoric, as Carey and Quirk put it: Innis uncovered the most vulnerable point in rhetoric of electrical sublime . .. . Innis principally disputed the notion that electricity would replace centralization in economics and politics with decentralization, democracy and a cultural revival . Innis placed the "tragedy of modern culture" in America and Europe upon the intrinsic tendencies of both printing press and electronic media to reduce space and time in the service of a calculus of commercialism and expansionism.4 Following Michael McGee, I take rhetoric to be a necessary material condition of human social existence.' Indeed, rhetoric is a constitutive component of the social application of technology, for it guides its possible applications . Consequently, my aim is to consider the appropriateness of the rhetoric of technological nationalism in the face of Canadian exigencies .

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM Canada, Technology, and Technological Rhetoric Canada is a technological state. This is just to say that Canada's existence as an economic unit is predicated upon transportation and communication technology. In addition, the idea of Canada depends upon a rhetoric about technology. Furthermore, we can understand the development of a Canadian nation-state in terms of the interplay between this technology and its rhetoric . That Canada owes its existence to technologies which bind space is readily apparent. Canada is a sparsely populated territory in which rock, mountains, and sheer distance inhibit human contact between those who live in its several distinct regions . The telegraph and the railroad to a degree overcame these obstacles and permitted the movement of goods and information across what was, in the nineteenth century, an undeveloped wilderness. Indeed, as Harold Innis observes, "[t]he history of the Canadian Pacific Railroad is primarily the history of the spread of western civilization over the northern half of the North American continent ."6 Through the CPR, Innis points out, western Canadian territories became integrated into the economic and political systems which had developed in Eastern Canada . And what is the nature of this "civilization?" It is one based in the circulation or communication of commodities and capital. The civilization the railroad extended was one of commerce as the CPR extended eastern economic interests. The railroad reproduced and extended a state apparatus and economy which concentrated power in metropolitan centres, permitting the incorporation and domination of margins. If the CPR was a "national project," it was so first and foremost as an economic venture . The railroad was built with a combination of public and private capital for the advantage of the state and merchants, and the former, like the latter, saw its interests in terms of economic development . The nineteenth century British-style state was, after all, a state of capitalists . The railroad d.id more though than enhance trade . It permitted the development of a political state and created the possibility of a nation. It did so by extending Ottawa's political power: it permitted Ottawa to exclude a powerful American presence from western Canada and thus establish its political control over the territory.' Specifically, the CPR fostered immigration into the Western plain, effectively discouraging Minnesotans from moving northward and annexing a sparsely populated area; the CPR permitted Ottawa to establish its military presence in the west, as it did when suppressing the Metis rebellion, and, of course, eastern Canadians no longer had to travel through the United States in order to reach British Columbia. Furthermore, this physical spanning of the country permitted Canadians, including those in Quebec, to unite in patriotic sentiment, as they

MAURICE CHARLAND did when militia from Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario fought side by side against Riel's supporters in Saskatchewan .8 In a sense, the power the CPR extended could become the object of a "national" experience ; the CPR offered those in Canada the experience of a technologically-mediated political unity as a common denominator . My point here is that the CPR permitted more than the physical linking of a territory. Apart from joining the country to facilitate commercial intercourse and political administration, the CPR offered the possibility of developing a mythic rhetoric of national origin . Following McGee's arguments on the development of collectivities, I would argue that such a rhetoric is necessary to the realization of the project of Canadian nationhood .9 That rhetoric is necessary both as a legitimation of a sovereign united Canada within the discursive field of parliamentary government, and as an inducement for those in Canada to see themselves as Canadian; for Canada to be legitimated, a myth is necessary. The CPR is well suited to such mythologization because (1) its construction in the face of political, economic, and geographic obstacles can be presented as an epic struggle; (2) the CPR was a state project and thus can be represented as the manifestation of a Canadian will to survive politically ; and (3) the steam engine itself offers Canadians the opportunity to identify with a nationalized icon of power. In sum, the CPR is significant not only as a mode of transportation and communication, but also as the basis for a nationalist discourse. The technological nation is discursive as well as political . Furthermore, the very existence of the CPR can be understood as a moment in the nationalist rhetoric it renders possible, for it was a symbolic strategy in the face of political exigencies. To put it bluntly, the CPR's existence is discursive as well as material, for it stands as an articulation of political will. While the CPR proved economically profitable for its backers, the linking of Montreal to Vancouver was not a happenstance or the result of a private entrepreneurial venture, rather the road was built under the auspices of Canada's federal government for the explicit purpose of extending spatial control over a territory. That is to say, the determination of Canada to remain British in character rather than be absorbed by the United States preceded the railway's construction . Furthermore, the construction of the Pacific Railway was not even a necessary condition to British Columbia's entry into Confederation : That Pacific colony had demanded only that Ottawa build a wagon road. Thus, the CPR was part of a rhetorical ploy. Cartier and MacDonald offered more than was necessary, a rail link to the west coast within ten years of British Columbia's joining the Dominion .l Consequently, the CPR cannot be viewed as the product or manifestation only of economy . The construction of the railroad was more than an overdetermined response to material and political exi200

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM gencies ; a will to statehood preceded it. It was an element of a strategy based in the belief that a nation could be built by binding space. As the materialization of belief and of political will, the railroad is the consequence of political rhetoric, of discourse which constitutes power. As John A. MacDonald put it, speaking in the House of Commons : The road will be constructed ... and the fate of Canada, will then as a Dominion, be realized . Then will the fate of Canada, as one great body be fixed .
I I

This epideictic oratory reveals that the railroad project exists as a moment in a species of rhetoric : technological nationalism. This rhetoric is evident in MacDonald's discourse above, for it links Canada's fate to a technology. Sir Charles Tupper, for example, could refer to the CPR as a "our great national work ."" This rhetoric presents the railroad as material condition of possibility for the existence of Canadian nation, and it finds its contemporary echo in Berton's treatment of Canadian history, as he features MacDonald as a mythical hero and asserts: [I-It was Macdonald's intention to defy nature and fashion a nation in the process . His tool, to this end, would be the Canadian Pacific. It would be a rare example of a nation created through the construction of a railway. 13 The myth of the railroad, or of the binding of space technologically to create a nation, places Canadians in a very particular relationship to technology. 14 In Kenneth Burke's language, this rhetoric privileges "agency" as the motive force for Canada's construction . Canada's existence would be based in a (liberal) pragmatism in which technology is more potent and more responsible for Canada's creation than the so-called "Fathers of Confederation." In the popular mind, Canada exists more because of the technological transcendence ofgeographical obstacles than because of any politician's will. Thus, technology itself is at the centre of the Canadian imagination, for it provides the condition of possibility for a Canadian mind. The import of "agency" or technology in Canada's official popular culture also can be seen, for example, in Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," where the CPR fuses with an entrepreneurial spirit and heralds the truly modern project of expansion and "progress" :
15

But .. . they looked in the future and what did they see? They saw an iron rail running from the sea to the sea ... 20 1

MAURICE CHARLAND The song of the future has been sung, All the battles have been won. We have opened up the land, All the world's at our command . .. We have opened up the soil With our teardrops and our toil. In the rhetoric and construction of the CPR, we see the genesis of technological nationalism as a component in the project of building the national .state. This project has two components: one, physical, the other, discursive: (1) The existence of a transcontinental Canada required the development of a system of transportation facilitating territorial annexation, colonization, and the implantation of a military presence. (2) The existence of this Canada also required the development of a rhetoric which ideologically constituted those in Canada as Canadians, united in the national project and under the political authority of a national government. For the moment, let us focus on the rhetorical component of technological nationalism. The Canadian tradition of parliamentary public address, which Canada inherited from Britain, places particular demands on the rhetoric of the Canadian state. In this "Whig Liberal" tradition, political power is legitimated by a rhetoric of the "people ." 16 That is to say, attempts to discursively secure legitimacy will argue that a national "people" exists which authorizes the state's power. For Ottawa to successfully exercise the power the CPR extended, it must counter arguments in favour of provincial autonomy or, conversely, annexation by the United States by persuasively representing those in Canada as forming a Canadian people . Indeed, the existence of such a pan-Canadian collectivity was asserted by Georges Etienne Cartier in defense of Confederation ." Without such a persuasive rhetoric of "national" identity and "national" interest, Ottawa's power would dissolve. In Canada, the constitution of a "people" of individuals united under a liberal state requires that the barriers between regions be apparently transcended. As it permits mastery over nature, technology offers the possibility of that apparent transcendence . Consequently, in order to assert a national interest and unity, Ottawa depends upon a rhetoric of technological nationalism - a rhetoric which both asserts that a technologically mediated Canadian nation exists, and calls for improved communication between regions to render that nation materially present . In other words, Canada is a state which must constantly seek to will a nation in its own image, in order to justify its very existence . The CPR can be understood as one manifestation of this necessity, but as a form of economic communication, it gave rise neither to a common Canadian culture, nor to a Canadian "public" of 202

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM citizens capable of participating in the country's political will formation . At most, it offered those in Canada the possibility of jointly participating in the rhetoric of the national project . Primarily, the CPR enmeshed Canada within a series of networks of domination . As Innis observes and the suppression of the Metis uprising of 1885 makes manifestly clear, spacebinding technologies extend power as they foster empire." Because of the CPR's inability to create a people or nation, another technological instrument was necessary, an instrument which would permit the representation and actualization of some form of Canadian "public" and common Canadian culture. Both the rhetoric of national identity and the fact of a Canadian political community required a cultural rather than economic form of communication . Technological nationalism required radio, and the advent of the broadcasting era advanced the project of a technologically-constituted nation. Technological Nationalism in the Broadcasting Era The development of electronic communication, and in particular broadcast technology, permitted a new articulation of the rhetoric of technological nationalism . Technological nationalism became a major factor in the development of the structure of broadcasting in Canada, as radio and television were enlisted into the national project . However, this rhetoric of a technologically-mediated Canada is contradictory. Significantly, Canada's first national radio network was established by a railway. While local radio had been pioneered by private entrepreneurs, national radio was the product of a state agency, the CNR . The national railway saw in radio a means to foster immigration, to enhance its own image, and to support the project of nationhood .19 CNR radio, which initially broadcast to railroad parlour cars, developed in 1924 into a network of stations in major Canadian cities from Vancouver to Moncton . It offered symphony broadcasts, comic operas, special events, and in 1931, a dramatic presentation of Canadian history.2 State-supported radio, following the railroad's path, presented those who live in Anglophone Canada with an image of Canada .21 CNR sought to bind Canada with information just as rail had bound Canada economically. Thus was forged the link in the official Canadian mind between railroad, radio, and national identity. As the official biographer of Sir Henry Thorton, the CNR's president and instigator of its radio services, writes : As a direct result of Sir Henry's abilities to see the possibilities inherent in a new medium of expression, the railway did for Canada what she was to apathetic to do for herself . ... He saw radio as a great unifying force in Canada ; to him the political conception tran20 3

MAURICE CHARLAND
scended the commercial, and he set out consciously to create a sense of nationhood through the medium of the Canadian National Railway Service. 12 The rhetoric of technological nationalism had incorporated radio . It sought to enlist another space-binding technology in the project of constituting a nation in the image of the state. Furthermore, this vision of an electronically constituted Canada did not remain Thorton's, but became that of the national government. Thus, one of the first "live" national broadcasts was a celebration of Canada . Prime Minister MacKenzie King's voice was heard across the country as he spoke from Ottawa on July 1, 1927, Confederation's anniversary. Commenting on that moment a month later at the Canadian National Exhibition, the Prime Minister presented radio, a gift of science, as the means whereby Canada would develop a "people" or "public" to justify its government: On the morning, afternoon and evening of July 1, all Canada became, for the time-being, a single assemblage, swayed by a common emotion, within the sound of a single voice. Thus has modern science for the first time realized in thegreat nation-state of modern days, that condition which existed in the little city-states of ancient times and which was considered by the wisdom of the ancients as indispensable to free and democratic government - that all the citizens should be able to hear for themselves the living voice. To them it was the voice of a single orator - a Demosthenes or a Cicero - speaking on public questions in the Athenian Assembly or in the Roman Forum . Hitherto to most Canadians, Ottawa had seemed far off, a mere name to hundreds of thousands of our people, but henceforth all Canadians will stand within the sound of the carillon and within hearing of the speakers on Parliament Hill. May we not predict that as a result of this carrying of the living voice throughout the length of the Dominion, there will be aroused a more general interest in public affairs, and an increased devotion of the individual citizen to the commonweal? 23 King's statement preceded a national radio policy by five years. However, it can be understood as a charge to future policy makers . Certainly, it articulated the major themes of technological nationalism in the broadcasting era . In particular, it reveals the paradoxical promise of democracy and domination inherent to the rhetoric of technological nationalism . MacKenzie King's speech reduces Canada to a community or small city which does not suffer from the isolating effects of distance, regionalism, or cultural diversity. Here, technology would create a polis where the proximity of 204

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM speaker to audience would promote "freedom" and give rise to a "democracy" of a public sharing a commonweal . As MacKenzie King also put it: "It is doubtful if ever before ... those in authority were brought into such immediate and sympathetic and personal touch with those with whom their authority is derived." 24 As such, technological nationalism is a form of liberalism. It proposes the electronic polis and affirms no value save the communication of the people's voices as expressed in Parliament. However, this vision of a society in and through communication is undermined by technological nationalism's other goal, that of creating a united Canada . This second goal is also implied above. Note that the speech identifies an interest in public affairs with "devotion," and that the community called into being is but an audience, subject to a voice . Radio, if it offers community, also offers domination, as Innis observes in counterpoint to MacKenzie King: The rise of Hitler to power was facilitated by the use of the loudspeaker and radio. .. . The radio, appealed to vast areas, overcame the division between classes in its escape from literacy, and favoured centralization and bureaucracy . A single individual could appeal at one time to vast numbers of people speaking the same language. ..." MacKenzie King's remarks capture the spirit of the rhetoric of Canadian government policy towards broadcasting as a means of binding space from his own time until the recent flirtations with cultural continentalism . As with rail service in Canada, broadcasting was consciously regarded as a means of creating a Canada with sufficient commonality to justify its political union, while simultaneously, it was also considered a means of simply enabling Canadians to be aware of each other and their already constituted values and identity. Such a contradictory role for broadcasting was articulated in various government reports dealing with the problems posed by broadcasting technology including the 1929 Report of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting, and the 1932 Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Broadcasting . These and subsequent reports offered a rhetoric which asserted the existence of a distinctly Canadian (and thus unitary) consciousness which required technological mediation and also charged broadcasting with the task of realizing that consciousness and its nation. The Development of a Broadcasting Policy of Technological Nationalism The 1932 Broadcasting Act followed rather than anticipated broadcasting's development. Canada's first commercial radio station was licenced in 20 5

MAURICE CHARLAND
1919. A decade elapsed before the Royal Commission on Radio Broadcasting, chaired by Sir John Aird, former president of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, issued a report calling for exclusive government control of broadcasting, including the nationalization of existing privately owned outlets.z6 The Commission's stance was one of "defensive expansionism," as Margaret Prang would put it, for it pointed to the threat of Americanized airwaves and called for protective federal initiatives ." Of course, the Commission asserted that the airwaves must be protected from an American expansion driven by market forces . More significantly, the Aird Report also echoed MacKenzie King as it asserted that radio must become a means for developing Canadian hegemony and fostering a unified culture in the face of geography and regionalism : At present the majority of programs heard are from sources outside of Canada. It has been emphasized that the continued reception of these had a tendency to mold the minds of young people in the home to ideals and opinions that are not Canadian. In a country of the vast geographical dimension of Canada, broadcasting will undoubtedly become a great force in imparting a national spirit and interpreting national citizenship .z$ The official Canadian mind conceives of Canada as a nation which must come to be in spite of space. Thus, even though the Aird Commission did not seek to establish a repressive single Canadian discourse, but called for a broadcasting system in which programming would be provincially controlled, it sought to create an extended community in which common Canadian interests would be articulated and a shared national identity could emerge . The popular mind, like the land, must be occupied . Note, however that technological nationalism only defines Canadian ideals and opinion by virtue of their not being from foreign sources . This is significant because, in its reluctance or inability to articulate a positive content to the Canadian identity - an identity still to be created - technological nationalism is a form of liberalism, privileging the process of communication over the substance of what is communicated. Consequently, if radio were to bring forth a nation by providing a common national experience, that experience would be one of communication, of sheer mediation. This is the first contradiction of technological nationalism : The content of the Canadian identity would be but technological nationalism itself. Ottawa did not, of course, permit a great deal of provincial autonomy in broadcasting . Nor did it, ultimately, establish a state monopoly. The 1929 Depression began weeks after the Aird Report's publication and the government turned to more urgent matters . Meanwhile, several provinces, led by Quebec, challenged Ottawa's jurisdiction over broadcasting in the courts . 206

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM This delayed the implementation of a Canadian radio policy . Canada's Supreme court upheld Ottawa's jurisdictional claim in 1931 . The British Privy Council rejected Quebec's appeal of that ruling in 1932. Only then did Ottawa act . Prime Minister Bennett, who considered radio "a most effective instrument for nation building," established in 1932 a special committee of the House of Commons to examine broadcasting and draft appropriate legislation.z9 The 1932 report echoed both the rhetoric and the recommendations of the Aird Commission. More strongly than before, radio was presented as heir to the railroad's mission . Thus, the chairman of the 1932 Parliamentary committee, Dr. Raymond Moran, asserted: Had the fathers of Confederation been able to add this means of communication to the ribbons of steel by which they endeavored to bind Canada in an economic whole, they would have accomplished a great deal more than they did, great even as their achievement was .3 The committee realized that national radio service, like national rail service, would not develop without state direction and capital . The Canadian culture and unity sought after would not spring from unbridled commerce, but would have to spring from the state itself. Thus the committee, linking radio to railroad, called for the creation of a radio commission empowered to nationalize private broadcasting stations. The hoped-for result would be a united Canada . The Commons committee's report led to the 1932 Radio Broadcasting Bill. That bill was introduced to the House by Prime Minister Bennett . As he presented the legislation, he charged radio with the task of creating national unity and serving the Empire . Radio, like the CPR, would permit a technologically mediated state and nation : Without such (Canadian) control radio broadcasting can never become a great agency for the communication of matters of national concern and for the diffusion of national thought and ideals, and without such control it can never be the agency by which national consciousness may be fostered and sustained and national unity still further strengthened . ... Furthermore, radio broadcasting, controlled and operated in this way, can serve as a dependable link in a chain of empire communications by which we may be more closely united one with the other .31 Bennett's rhetoric appropriated for Ottawa the right to create a consciousness. Certainly, his discourse is apparently liberal, for it presumes that 207

MAURICE CHARLAND national concerns and thoughts pre-exist radio and need only to be "communicated" and "diffused." However, Bennett's address also reveals that without the common denominators of radio and state, there would be no nation, for it is a nation dependent upon technology to be created and sustained . Radio was to be a means of socialization, diffusing the ideal of the nation to be constructed, the ideal of communication . In other words, the process of communication would legitimate the state and the (British) empire whose power it extended. The Contradictions of Economic and Cultural Communication Canada did not end up with the exact broadcasting system these reports envisaged, of course, for the abstract principles of policy are not easily realized . In particular, the development of both communication and transportation infrastructures are based on technologies and economic forces which exist somewhat autonomously from the state. Indeed, from the outset, radio offered little promise of creating or strengthening the Canadian state or nation; since American signals penetrated Canada's borders far more easily than steel rails . By 1930, Canadians were more likely to receive American than Canadian signals : nearly all Canadians were within reach of an American station, while only 60% could receive a signal originating in Canada .32 Furthermore, American-made programs were very popular among Canadians . At least 50% of Canadian listening time was devoted to United States programming .33 While the CNR at that time operated a national network service (albeit of limited scope), it could not compete with American programs, be they distributed in Canada by Canadian stations, or by powerful stations based in the United States. In consequence, Margaret Prang points out, as I observed above, that Canadian broadcasting policy has been characterized by "defensive expansionism." It has been sensitive to American expansion, and has called for a concerted state effort to use technology both as a form of defense and as a means of establishing Canadian hegemony over its territory . Canada had secured its western territory through space-binding technology ; it had not, however, secured its cultural territory. Thus the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, and its successor, the CBC, were instituted to occupy and defend Canada's ether and consciousness .33 While various governments in Ottawa could rhetorically call for a technologically mediated nation, they were in no way assured of success, especially since radio, like rail, is an extension of an economic system dominated by American capital. In spite of Prang's "defensive expansionism," and the conscientious work of broadcasters at the CRBC and CBC, anglophone 208

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM Canada found itself saddled with a model of broadcasting as entertainment largely developed outside of the country, and with a timetable for its development over which Ottawa had little control. Canada was the subject of what Boyd-Barrett terms "media [as opposed to cultural] imperialism ." 34 And, of course, both of these could only be countered through major government expenditures . Technological nationalism thus encountered its constraint. In passing the 1932 Radio Broadcasting Bill, Parliament sought to empower the discourse of technological nationalism . However, while talk may be cheap, its transmission by radio is not and Parliament was ultimately unwilling to advance the funds necessary for the new radio service, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), to nationalize existing stations or establish many new facilities.35 The federal government, under John A. MacDonald's leadership, had been willing to subsidize the CPR, but that project ultimately would promote Canadian commerce and the Canadian accumulation of capital. State radio, on the other hand, offered no financial benefits . On the contrary, state radio would always be a drain on the public purse, particularly if it were to avoid commercialization and seek to "uplift" its audience, rather than transmit popular (and predominantly American) programmes. We see here a fundamental difference between the railroad and radio. While both were and are called upon to help create a nation, the railroad's nation is economic, while radio's is cultural and ideological. That the CPR would carry American goods, or that its Canadian cargo would be undistinguishable from American freight, was unimportant . Canadian commerce could be identical in content to its American counterpart and remain Canadian. Conversely, radio is not a common carrier and is thus quite unlike rail service. If radio were treated as a common carrier, like the railroad, its content would be irrelevant . Radio would be successful if it were profitable. However, radio is Canadian by its content, and is thus quite unlike the CPR. Canadian radio must create its own "freight," and find a market for it as well. However, before Canadian radio had developed into a mature form, the nature of demand in the radio market had already been constituted by the distribution of American programmes. Consequently, Canadian radio, unlike Canadian rail, could be either profitable or Canadian, not both. We see here then the second contradiction of technological nationalism : it identifies a medium ultimately based upon a foreign economic and programming logic as the site for Canada's cultural construction . The CRBC's main failure was its inability to compete successfully with commercial broadcasters and so transform the airwaves into a medium fostering nationhood. This failure was not unique to the CRBC, but is endemic to Canadian broadcasting's history . The Canadian Broadcasting 209

MAURICE CHARLAND
Corporation, established to succeed the CRBC in 1936, faced the same dilemma. From its creation until the advent of television in Canada in 1952, the CBC did, to a degree, offset the influence of American broadcasting in Canada . Certainly, without state-sponsored radio, the airwaves in Canada would have become but another market for American networks. In particular, the CBC did offer to Canadians a common experience and its popularity increased during the second world war, as Canadians sought information on Canada's war effort. Nevertheless, American programming remained popular in Canada - Toronto and Montreal had US network affiliates, and the CBC's most popular programme were American productions such as "Fibber McGee and Molly" and "Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. "36 Communication technology, heralded as the means of promoting Canadian statehood and nationhood, paradoxically offered those in Canada a common "national" experience which included cultural commodities from the United States . This phenomenon was intensified with the development of more sophisticated and expensive media. New media, as they accelerated the binding of space and the rise of empire, increasingly drew Canada into the American cultural system . Thus, when CBC television was born in 1952, there were already 146,000 receiving sets in Canada with antennae pointing south." Television as a medium, with expensive genres of programming, styles of production, and a star system, was already developing in the United States . Canadian television could scarcely compete . Only the CBC's monopoly over Canadian TV network programming and the still poor penetration of cable television preserved a Canadian presence on Canadian screens . Thus, the 1957 Royal Commission on Broadcasting observed that Canadian television could not be Canadian and turn a profit, and reasserted the state's role in constructing a national identity: The choice is between a Canadian state-controlled system with some flow of programs east and west across Canada, with some Canadian content and the development of a Canadian sense of identity, at a substantial public cost, and a privately owned system which forces of economics will necessarily make predominantly dependent on American radio and television programmes.38 As in previous decades, the threat of American expansion is presented as warranting state action . And, as in the past, this 1957 report articulates the imperative of technological nationalism : It likens broadcasting to the CPR as it affirms that "the building of the first Canadian railway was only the first of many devices to pull together into a nation the vast expanse of Canadian territory." 39 It then asserts that without public expenditures, a Canadian nation could not exist. Within the logic of a technologically 210

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM mediated nation, the committee's observations are, of course, "true ." More significantly, as an argumentative justification for a public policy of nationbuilding, their import is rhetorical. The need to support Canadian television is based upon a vision of technology as a means of creating and maintaining a nation at will. Significantly, this rhetoric sees a Canadian nation and identity as exegetic of the state itself. Ninety years after Canada's political constitution, a national identity is still so ephemeral that the state, and its agencies, feel compelled to create it . Technological nationalism refuses to consider that Canada is not a nation but a state, and that Canadian cultures could exist outside of their technological mediation . Canadian television initially offered a varied menu which included many high quality programmes. The CBC's schedule was marked by acclaimed dramas, musical programmes, and documentaries .4 However, as television "matured," it increasingly failed to create the nation that the rhetoric of technological nationalism envisaged. As early as 1956, only 45% of programming on CBC English-language television was of Canadian origin .41 The CBC, in order to fill its schedule, raise advertising revenue, and respond to viewer demand, offered what it considered to be the best of US programming. Writing the research report for the 1957 Royal Commission, Dallas Smythe wondered whether the CBC was not its "own worst enemy," offering the "best" in US programmes and so arousing a desire for more of them.42 The economics of the technology whose mission it was to consolidate Canadian unity permitted the diffusion of American culture into Canada . Furthermore, as television expanded in Canada, the number of hours of American productions viewed on Canadian screens steadily increased. In particular, as television developed, it increasingly offered the potential for profit. Thus, private interests were anxious to gain access to Canada's major markets and compete with CBC stations. In 1958, a new broadcasting act removed from the CBC the power to regulate broadcasting and established a new agency for that purpose . In 1961, the Board of Broadcast Governors (BBG), yielded to business and viewer demand and licensed second-television services in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Halifax .43 The creation of the CTV television network increased Canadian viewer choice, and so further extended US television into Canada . In retrospect, the BBG's decision might seem to have been ill-advised . Certainly, it did not promote Canadian unity and identity as broadcasting was charged to do. However, the technological imperative is not the exclusive property of the state. The technological and economic possibility of offering a second television service to Canada begat a desire for it both among an audience mesmerized by television's delights and entrepreneurs eager to turn a profit . Television, as a key vehicle of consumer culture, gave rise to a desire for itself.

MAURICE CHARLAND
The BBG, while presiding over the Americanization of Canadian airwaves, could only echo faintly the rhetoric of technological nationalism and promulgate a series of ineffective Canadian programming content regulations . Needless to say, except for news, public affairs, and hockey, Canadians preferred programs produced by the American media empire. Canadian broadcast technology had become primarily a channel for American cultural products . Television was increasingly like a railroad, for it was primarily a delivery system for standardized commodities produced in the United States . Furthermore, television's tendency to integrate Canada into the cultural system of the United States was accelerated by the cabling of Canadian cities. Cable television rendered the idea of a Canadian mediated culture nearly obsolete. By 1976, close to 50% of Canadian homes were served by cable and 7196 of Canadian English viewing time was devoted to programmes of foreign origin .44 This was, in fact, noted by the BBG's successor, the Canadian Radio Television Commission (CRTC), which asserted : "we now have in place a distribution system more effectively oriented to the development and distribution of more foreign programming than to the creation and evolution of distinctly Canadian works . "45 Clearly, space-binding technology has not permitted the development of an authentic Canadian culture, shared by the majority of Canadians, which is autonomous from American culture . Communication technology has perhaps offered Canadians a shared experience, but only as it has also included them in the American cultural market. If regionalism has been softened by technology, the identity or culture fostered is hardly a distinctive Canadian one. Furthermore, it could be argued, as does Bernard Ostry, that efforts by Ottawa to develop cultural unity have fueled demands in Canada for regional autonomy.46 In the face of a discourse of nation-building, a turn away from a technologized culture in the image of the federal state would hardly be surprising. Nevertheless, federal policy-makers continue to dream a nation and rhetorically assert the legitimacy of their efforts through technological nationalism. For example, in 1977 CBC president A.W.Johnson announced the corporation's plan to "Canadianize" its programming . He characterized the American cultural "onslaught" as "rape" and likened today's CBC to Confederation's CPR : 41 Our forefathers were prepared to pay the premium as they supported John A. MacDonald with his and our national dream . They paid the premium building East-West communication links which have been the life-giving arteries ofour nation from the time of the voyageurs, the Hudson Bay trappers, and Van Horne to the contemporary connective series of railroads, telephones, airlines, pipelines, 212

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM radio, and television. Without these East-West links Canada would not survive, for effective communications and transportation systems are far more significant factors in the existence of Canada as a political and social entity than for any other nation on earth.48 Johnson here depicts Canada as a technologically constituted society. Without technology, there would be no Canada . Indeed, Canada does not emerge out of the land, but out of its conquest by technology and political will . And, for Johnson, technology and political will must again, as always, counter the American threat . The Contradictions of Culture and Technology While, certainly, the Canadian economic state depends upon technology, we should question whether technology constitutes or regenerates a Canadian culture . Technological nationalism offers Canadians a common experience of signs and information in which culture is disembodied . Thus, technology promotes a cultural experience which is not grounded in a region or tradition, particularly if it is in the service of some "national" interest. Because the state itself is the basis of a Canadian commonality, its national consciousness would be the product of a bureaucratic cultural apparatus . Once a culture is associated with television, and technology generally, the nature of the American subordination becomes clear. American culture (or, what's the same: intense commodification) is imposing itself on Canada through the very technologies which should be constitutive of the Canadian experience and essence. Furthermore, America's presence on Canadian screens is a curious form of subordination, for Canadians enjoy American cultural products, even while recognizing the cultural invasion, or what, in broadcast industry jargon, is referred to as "market penetration ." It seems, then, more accurate to say that Canadians are being seduced by American cultural commodities designed for a technology capable of eliciting desire .49 This points to the third contradiction of technological nationalism: The mediated culture which is imperative to Canadian statehood has within its logic the seduction of technology itself.50 American television exploits the seductiveness of the technological experience. Even in the ideal world of Canadian television envisioned by the CBC, the Canadian experience would remain an experience of technology, of the state, and of power. In its 1978 submission to the CRTC, the CBC asserts that Canada's shared experience includes Paul Henderson's 1972 winning goal for Team Canada against the USSR, the televised drama of the Montreal Olympics, and Peter Kent's reporting of federal election results.5 1 Note that each of these moments of experience are "media events" where national identity is inscribed in a mythos of power, and where official state 21 3

MAURICE CHARLAND culture is celebrated. Each of these elements of our "national experience" exists precisely as an absence of a non-technologized commonality . The Canadian imagination, according to technological nationalism, is a technologically mediated one which derives from the state and is in opposition to nature as well as regionalism. But, in the face of the American presence and regional cultures, traditions, and history the discourse of the Canadian state and its institutions can only offer mediation itself as the ground for unity, as I have earlier observed. Just as the CPR would be our "national dream," so the CBC would be our common cultural ground . Thus, the CBC can assert that its purpose is "the creation of our national consciousness" (my emphasis).5 z As is obvious to even the casual observer of Canadian broadcasting, and as the CBC and CRTC have at times complained, electronic delivery systems cannot, in themselves, create a culture . As the 1956 Royal Commission on Broadcasting observed, what is important is the programming . In order to give rise to a Canadian identity, communication technologies must carry Canadian products . However, to simply berate Parliament for its unwillingness to better fund Canadian television, to criticize commercial interests for their unwillingness to sacrifice profit for the sake of a national culture, or to attack the CRTC for lacking the courage to halt the development of cable systems, is in large measure to miss the point. The failure of technological nationalism lies not in Parliament, CTV, or the CRTC, but in contradictions inherent to technological nationalism itself. Conclusion Rail and radio differ. The latter binds space much more efficiently than the former. The railroad depends upon the physical domination of geography to join distant points. Radio, on the other hand, does not so much bind space as annihilate it. The railroad binds space one-dimensionally as it links east to west; radio renders space insignificant across two or three dimensions as all points become proximate. Thus, radio, and electronic technology in general, will tend to ensnare Canada within an American web of information. The advocates of Canada's continual technological reconstitution seem to have intuitively, but naively, grasped what Innis observed, that technologies of communication extend and strengthen empires. They sought to favour the Canadian (and British Empire) domination of a geographic and cultural territory, but they failed to realize that such technologies were not merely the tools of political will permitting control over a region. As Innis saw, space-binding technologies favour and transform existing centers of power. They are not the political, economic, and cultural equivalents of string and tape, which can patch together a territory. They are media which extend power, and for Canada in the twentieth century, power is based in 214

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM the United States . Thus, as broadcasting developed in Canada, it adopted the form and content of American programmes. The Americanization of Canada's airwaves should hardly be surprising, for the American industry of cultural production has economic, technical, and human resources which Canada could not match . Sheer economic forces favoured the integration of English Canada's cultural market to the American one. This is particularly so because the penetration of American overthe-air signals into Canada during broadcasting's early years established the form of media in Canada . Broadcasting, the technology called upon to form a Canadian cultural identity, became a form of spectacle and entertainment.5 3 American signals defined what radio and television would be in the popular mind. Thus, from the outset, radio and television were media dedicated to the distribution of cultural commodities. In the "cultural" marketplace, a Canadian industry could hardly compete. Indeed, private broadcasters ; acting with great economic rationality, largely contended themselves with distributing cultural products produced elsewhere rather than attempting to create their own. The economic forces drawing Canada into the American system of cultural production, as accelerated by technology, perhaps could have been undermined by a very powerful political will. One could argue, as does Johnson and the CBC, that just as Canada did build the CPR against great odds, it could have created a Canadian broadcasting system through high levels of public expenditure. Certainly, with sufficient funding, an all Canadian CBC would be possible . However, this view fails to consider that for television to offer a "national" experience, it would of necessity need to integrate itself into the logic of the cultural commodity system . A Canadian culture would depend upon Canadian audiences, and would therefore have to attract viewers in a market defined by the American cultural system. And, for Canadian products to be consumed in the cultural commodity marketplace, they would have to become "Americanized," either to compete with American signals straying into Canada, or to compete in either the American or USA-dominated "world" markets . Indeed, recent initiatives by the Department of Communication and the CBC to promote the international marketing of programs suggests a recognition that media products are commodities, that the culture system is an industry.54 This abdication to the logic of space-binding technology leads us to competitive Canadian cultural products such as Porky's, set in Florida, the First Choice Pay TV Canadian content offerings such as features starring Red Skelton and Robin Williams, and a documentary on US General Douglas McCarthur. Canada's prowess in developing space-binding technology, celebrated as a national achievement in the National Dream, ironically serves now to undermine Canada's cultural autonomy. 21 5

MAURICE CHARLAND
In the absence of the American (culture as commodity) presence, it is doubtful whether the logic of technological nationalism would be any more successful . Technological nationalism, as a form of liberalism, presumes that communication will reveal a common interest uniting Canadians in spite of their differences : The CBC would both express Canada's diversity and promote a (singular) Canadian identity ; Telidon would be tomorrow's soapbox and town meeting hall.55 Technological nationalism presents technology merely as a neutral medium facilitating nationhood . However, it is hardly so benign, for it locates the state's very raison d'etre in the experience of technological mediation . Indeed, as Innis observed, space-binding technologies establish dominions of power by extending markets and the commodity system . Radio and television, and other communication technologies, may appear unlike the CPR or the system of trade because they distribute information rather than goods. However, the content of media are commodities which are produced, bought and sold, and electronic media extend the economic and cultural influence of centres of production over marginal areas. Most importantly, media promote the cultural dependency of margins . While the rhetoric of technological nationalism promises a public in which Canadians would share their commonality and participate in political will formation, it offers ultimately a state in which listeners are subject to a discourse which can only be produced by specialists . Technological nationalism's liberalism ideologically conceals a set of power relations. This is apparent in McKenzie King's comment on his 1927 Diamond jubilee address : Canadians, under technological nationalism would be subject to a voice. They would form an audience to a media product which would be the basis for their common experience and identity. Technological nationalism undermines the possibility of a community of participation . As Carey and Quirk note: Modern media have, however, a common effect: they widen the range of reception while narrowing the range of distribution. Large audiences receive but are unable to make direct response or participate otherwise in vigorous discussion. Consequently, modern media create the potential for the simultaneous administration and control of extraordinary spaces and populations . No amount of rhetoric will exorcise this effect. The bias of technology can only be controlled by politics, by curtailing the expansionist tendencies of technological societies and by creating avenues of democratic discussion and participation beyond the control of modern technology.51 Broadcast communication technology does not create the site of a true polis . Furthermore, just as MacKenzie King was also the embodiment of the 216

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM Canadian state and its power as he addressed Canada, Canada's discourse on itself would be the discourse of technologized power, for Canada's national dream is a dream of technology . Canada is a country whose national experience follows its state experience. Consequently, a Canadian identity and culture would be rooted in the state itself, for it is through the state that Canada's populace is constituted as a people. Technological nationalism therefore cannot but offer the empty experience of mediation . Not only do communication technologies favour centers of power and promote the suppression of marginal experience, but they transform culture into the experience of commodities and of technology itself. Thus, even if technological nationalism could offer a Canadian experience and promote a national identity across space, that identity would become a disposable one. To conclude : Technological nationalism's promise is suspect because the commodified culture it would constitute would have no stability, and would be but another instance of the culture of technological society. As Innis observes: "Stability which characterized certain periods in earlier civilizations is not the obvious objective of this civilization ." 51 Our space-binding culture, also a commodity culture, changes rapidly - fashions, music, politics, are celebrated and then their value is exhausted.5a A technologically mediated Canadian culture, based in the experience of media commodities, would contribute little to a Canadian self-understanding . Rather than interpreting some supposedly Canadian experience, and offering "a sense of balance and proportion, "59 technological nationalism can only offer itself in a constantly mutating form. We must develop new rhetorics about and for ourselves, and create our cultures otherwise and elsewhere . The national dream offers only the dark sun of alienation .
Notes 1. The National Dream, based on Pierre Berton's history of the CPR, was originally broadcast during the 1973-1974 television season as an eight-part series . The series was rebroadcast in 1982 and 1985 . Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion : Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), p. 18; Language as Symbolic Action : Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1966): 362-373. James W. Carey andJohn J. Quirk. ''The Mythos of the Electronic Revolution," American Scholar 39 (1, 1970): 219-251; 40 (2, 1970): 395-424. Ibid., p. 238. Michael Calvin McGee, "The Ideograph: A Link between Rhetoric and Ideology," Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (February 1980): 4-9. Harold A. Innis, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1923 ; rpt. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1971), p. 287.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

MAURICE CHARLAND

7.

I am subscribing to a "metropolitain" interpretation of Canadian history . This perspective is central to Innis' analysis and is discussed in J.M .S. Careless, "Frontierism, Metropolitainism, and Canadian History," The Canadian Historical Review 35 (March 1954): 1-21 . Quebec initially supported, albeit with some reservations, Ottawa's decision to put down militarily the 1885 Metis uprising . Popular support in Quebec for Riel developed subsequent to his defeat. See, Robert Rumilly, Histoire de la Province de Quebec, vol. 5 (Montreal: Editions Bernard Valiquette, 1942) : 1-108. Michael Calvin McGee, "In Search of the'People': A Rhetorical Alternative;' Quarterly Journal of Speecb 66 (February 1980): 1-16. G.P . de T. Glazenbrook, A History of Transportation in Canada, vol. 2 (1934 ; rpt. Toronto: ' McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1964), p. 47 . Canada . House of Commons, Debates, 17 January 1881, p. 488. Canada . House of Commons, Debates, 14 December 1880, p. 50 . Pierre Berton, The National Dream (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970): 11 . Various rhetorics of technology are possible . Canada's rhetoric is rooted in its colonial origins and state-supervised development . In the United States, where local development preceded the federal state, a different rhetoric of technology arose. There, "clean" electrical technology was heralded as a means to restore the pastoral ideals of a democratic community and harmony with nature . See, Carey and Quirk, pp . 226-235, passim . Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945), pp . xvxxiii, 275-317 . McGee, "In Search of the'People ."' Georges Etienne Cartier, address to the Assembly of Lower Canada, 7 February 1865, in Le manuel de la paroles: Manifestes Quebecois, vol. 1 (Sillerey : Editions du boreal express, 1977), pp . 53-61 : "Les nations sont formees maintenant par I'agglomeration de divers peoples rassem bles par les interess et sympathies, ceci est noire position dans le moment actuel . Une objection a ete suscite au projet maintenant sous notre consideration [Confederation 1, a cause des mots 'nouvelle nationalite. Lorsque nous sommes unis, si toutefois nous le devenons, nous formerons one nationalite politique independante de l'origine nationale, ou de la religion d'aucun individu ." The interests of empire in the CPR are quite evident: Great Britain took an interest in the CPR's construction, Canadian Pacific instituted steamer service from its western terminus to Australia and the Orient in order to link British territories, and the railway came to be considered part of the Empire's system of communication and received a British postal subsidy. See, John Murray Gibbon, Steel of Empire (London: Rich & Cowen, Ltd., 1935) : 355. Frank W. Peers, The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting 1920-1951 (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1969): 23-24. Ibid. CNR radio did offer some French-language programming on its network, much to displeasure of many in Western Canada who objected to the French language being on the air outside of Quebec. As Innis observes of radio: "Stability within language units became more evident and instability between language units more dangerous." Harold A. Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1951): 82 . Darcy Marsh, The Tragedy of Sir Henry Thorton (Toronto : The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1935): 115-116 . William Lyon MacKenzie King, address at the Canadian National Exhibition, July 1927, in Signing On: The Birth of Radio in Canada (Toronto: Doubleday Canada Limited, 1982): 190.

8.

9. 10 . 11 . 12 . 13 . 14 .

15 . 16. 17.

18 .

19 . 20 . 21 .

22 . 23 .

TECHNOLOGICAL NATIONALISM
24 . 25 . 26. 27 . 28 . 29 . 30 . 3l . 32 . 33 . 34 . Ibid. Innis, Bias of Communication, p. 82 . Canada . Royal Commission on Broadcasting, 1929 (Aird Commission), Report, pp . 12-13. Margaret Prang, "The Origins of Public Broadcasting in Canada," The Canadian Historical Review 46 (1, 1965) : 11-31. Aird Commission, p. 6. Reprinted in Peers, p. 78 . Reprinted in Ibid., p. 97 . Reprinted in Ibid., pp. 101-102 . Prang, p. 3 . Ibid., p. 4. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, "Media Imperialism: Towards an International Framework for the Analysis of Media Systems," in Mass Communication and Society, edited by James Curran, Michael Gurevitch, andJanet Woollacott (London: Open University Press, 1977): 116-135 . The CRBC's funding problems are discussed in E. Austin Weir, The Struggle for National Broadcasting in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965) : 173-177 . Ibid., p. 281 ; Peers, p. 283, 285. Canada . Royal Commission on Broadcasting, 1957 (Fowler 1), Report, p. 313. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 9. Weir, pp. 368-402. Fowler I, p. 365 . Dallas Smythe, "On the Comparative Availability of United States TV Network Programmes in Communities with TV Service in Canada and in the United States," in Ibid., p. 403 . Second service television stations were licenced in 1960 and 1961 . The CTV network was licenced in 1961 . See, Canada . Board of Broadcast Governors, Annual Report, 1960, p. 8; 1961, pp . 7, 12 . Canada . Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Special Report on Broadcasting in Canada, vol . 1, pp . 19, 49 . Canada . Canadian Radio Television Commission, Policies Respecting Broadcasting Receiving Undertakings (Cable Television), 16 December 1975, p. 3. Bernard Ostry, The Cultural Connection (Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1978): 25-26, 61 . A.W. Johnson, Touchstone for the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, June 1977, pp . 4, 10 . Ibid., p. 8. For a discussion of the seduction of technological experience see, Arthur Kroker, Technology and the Canadian Mind: InnislMcLuhan/Grunt (Montreal : New World Perspectives, 1984 and New York : St . Martin's Press, 1985), 53-74 ; and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York : The Continuum Publishing Company, 1969): 138-147. Ibid. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The CBC - A Perspective: Submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commissions in Support of Applications of Network Licences, May 1978, p. l .

35 . 36 . 37 . 38 . 39 . 40 . 41 . 42 . 43 . 44 . 45 . 46 . 47 . 48 . 49 .

50. 51 .

MAURICE CHARLAND
52 . 53 . Ibid. Of course, electronic technologies are in themselves spectacular . Radios initial appeal, for example, lay not in its programming, but in its ability to invisibly and magically connect distant points . For instances of the recent competitive strategy for what ironically are now termed "cultural industries" see, Canada . Department of Communications, l'bwards a New National Broadcasting Policy, February 1983 ; and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Strategy of the CBC, 1983, pp. 79-80.

54 .

55 .

Canada . Ministere des Communications, Notespour une allocution du Alinistre des communications !'honorable Francis Fox devant !association canadienne des communications, Ottawa, 5 June 1982, p. 17 : "II est indeniable que les technologies nouvelles ont le pouvoir de nous atomiser, de faire de nous des isoles relies individuellement A on centre informatique multimedia . Mais elles ont aussi le pouvoir de nous rapprocher, de dormer naissance au village global, ou plutot a la ville globale dont Telidon serait la place publique, le crieur et le conteur." Carey and Quirk, p. 240. Innis, Bias of Communication, p. 141. For an enlightening exploration of the implications of the ephemerality and impermanence of "space-bound" contemporary culture see, James W. Carey, "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan," The Antioch Review (Spring 1967): 29-35. Innis, Bias of Communication, p. 86.

56. 57 . 58 .

59.

Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadierrne de theorie politictue et sociale, Volume X, N. 1-2 (1986).

TECHNOLOGY AND EMANCIPATORY ART: THE MANITOBA VISION

Arthur Kroker and Kenneth J. Hughes

The Artist as Prophet In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan said that the age of electric technology is a period of intense anxiety and bewilderment.' It was McLuhan's special insight that in the era of electric technology artists have a very vital role to play. "Art is precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology" .' For McLuhan, artists can no longer loosely be spoken of as being ahead of their time for the simple reason that "our technology is, also, ahead of its time". 3 The artistic imagination provides an early indication, sometimes "decades in advance" of coming technological changes and their likely impact on society. To the extent that the artist "possesses the means of anticipating and avoiding the consequences of technological trauma",' then the artistic imagination is also prophetic . As the individual of "integral awareness", the artist is most deeply embedded in the reality of the times, and most receptive, at any moment, to grasping at a deep level the implications of new technologies . If McLuhan is correct in his assumption of the artist as the "prophet" of technological experience, then there is a desperate, and very practical, need to look at Canadian art for clues to human survival . As it happens, we are fortunate in this regard in Canada, for there exists in contemporary Canadian art a powerful, coherent, and unique discourse on technology. Indeed, it might even be suggested that in the works of four contemporary Manitoba artists - Esther Warkov, Tony Tascona, Don Proch and Ivan Eyre there has developed a radically new exploration of the dialectic of technol-

KROKER/HUGHES ogy and society. Taken collectively - though they are not a "school" - these artists have produced a visual discourse on technology which has few equals in contemporary art . For they have done, in fact, that which is most difficult . They have infused the question of technology with an historical concern (the remembrance of the prairie past) ; with a moral concern (the exploration of a democratic and critical approach to technology) ; and with an aesthetic concern (the creative use of new technologies in expanding the artistic imagination) . Thus the extent that we grasp the urgency of a more creative approach to the technological experience as a vital necessity for Canada's survival, these prairie artists emerge as guides, indeed prophets, in the exploration of a new "national consciousness" . They confront us with a new "vision" of Canadian society. And what's more: their artistic productions demonstrate that in the age of postmodernism the most local is also

the most cosmopolitan .

These Manitoba artists have not, of course, developed a monolithic understanding of technology. On the contrary, their work is significant precisely because it is internally divergent and heterogeneous . Their use of the artistic imagination represents, in fact, perhaps all of the major positions which we can possibly assume on the question of technology. Thus, Esther Warkov brings to a new height of visual eloquence the perspective of technological dependency . The work of Tony Tascona is, in an important sense, a reverse, but parallel, image of Warkov's . Tascona represents, and this brilliantly, the perspective of technological humanism in the artistic imagination . And, midway between these poles of dependency and humanism, we discover the ironic, and yet searing, visions of technology which inform the works of Don Proch and Ivan Eyre. To study the artistic productions ofProch and Eyre takes us on a journey of discovery which leads us through all of the variations possible on the theme of technological realism. To Warkov's noble dirge for the victims of technological society and to Tascona's creative exploration of the inner language of science and technology, Proch and Eyre add the impressive attempt to create. a new mediation between past and future, between technology and environment . Lament, utopia and realism: the dominant themes of these Manitoba artists as they confront, on our behalf, the new world of technology. But in the end, it does not matter so much that their artistic imaginations serve the task of prophecy, for they have another crucial ethical enterprise on the agenda . They take seriously the social obligation to be agents of historical remembrance . The dynamic meeting in their works of a future-oriented prophecy and of a constant invocation of Canadian historical traditions makes their artistic productions the fusion-point for a new national consciousness. These artists teach us two vital lessons : first, there is a sharp division between the human use of technology and the imposition of a 222

TECHNOLOGY AND ART technocracy which carries within it all of the signs of a living death; secondly, the creation of a ethically-informed technology would involve the development of an active relationship among morality, technique, and environment . As we study therefore the discourse on technology in Manitoba art we embark on nothing less than a radical experiment in learning : we learn how to rethink anew the meaning of the technological experience. Technology and Dependency The Canadian philosopher, George Grant, posed the fateful question of how to live critically inside the technological dynamo. In Technology and Empire, he inquires: If "technique is ourselves", if we cannot recover a language of "the good" by which to measure the deprivations of technological society, then must it be the tragic Canadian fate merely to "celebrate or stand in silence" before the relentless power of technology? He responds with a solitary hint about a possible escape-route from the prison-house of technology and dependency: we can live critically in the technological namo only by "listening intently for the intimations of deprival" . 5 sther Warkov approaches the critical ideal of neither remaining silent in the face of technology nor of celebrating the coming to be of technique . She listens "intently for the intimations of deprival" . In fact, her artistic imagination becomes precious precisely because it begins the recovery of a language of the human good against which to measure the deprivals of technological society. Warkov attempts to do the impossible: running against the tide of the "technological dynamo" which works by speed-up and constant acceleration, Warkov reverses the process by insisting on the necessity, and, indeed, dignity of the recovery of the historical imagination . She reminds us of who we are and what we are rushing to become, and she does this through the almost "theatrical" device of arraigning the victims of post-modernity - demolished cultures, dead families and children, suppressed civilisations - against the claims to freedom of the present . In a society which functions by forgetfulness, she holds up the mirror of the past as a prophetic sign of the future. All of Warkov's painting, ranging through the Rabbi Series, the Scream Series, and the Camera Series, have a measured and haunting sense through which the active remembrance of victims of the dynamo recover an intimation of the losses suffered by the inhabitants of the contemporary century. Her artistic imagination emerges as that of the sympathetic, critical historian of the post-modern fate for each of the works reveals an explicit and painful probing of the human wreckage left in the wake of the will to technological mastery of the present . In a recent interview, Warkov remarked : "I think from an early age, I was attracted to old photographs . 223

KROKER/HUGHES

I've always been fascinated with the past" .6 But this fascination with the past is specific, always directed to the site (and sight) of a fundamental human loss. In a way unfamiliar to the contemporary eye her artistic imagination produces a visual lament for the excluded, the lost, in the meeting of technology and empire . For example, Warkov admits that she often builds her paintings around photographs. Surveyor in the City of Lost Dreams, her brilliant depiction of the deep division between industrialism and sensual experience, began with the photograph of an engineer. Passing Through she constructed around a photograph of the anonymous figure of the driver (the camera obscura) who witnesses the genocide of civilisation . Rolling Home to Moses, her haunting and complex "figurative" presentation of freedom and domination, developed out of a photograph taken by Margaret Bourke-White at the opening of the death-camp of Auschwitz.' To study Warkov's paintings means to be in the presence of a prolonged keaning: a meditation in the form of a lament for the exclusions of the contemporary century, the absence of which speaks directly to the impoverishment of modern times . Always Warkov pulls us painfully to the site of the exterminated. Her paintings become, in fact, a recitative of human deprival, for her visual imagination works at the threshold of menace and terror . Everywhere in her paintings we feel the presence of a nameless, silent and almost decentered power. Images are violently detached from one another ; all is a matter of fragmentation, dispersion, and shattered possibilities. Her figurative art, in fact, produces the cumulative effect of a silent scream. Warkov notes about her projects: "My intent has always been to create an art that had a soul"' Why? Perhaps because she approaches the model of what the art critic, John Berger, has described as the "primitive artist-9: the prophetic, artistic imagination which fuses in art objects the collective unconscious, the daily stress of life. One critical event provides Warkov in an unforgiving way, with a

A:

Warkov, Surveyor in the City of Lost Dreams

22 4

TECHNOLOGY AND ART privileged access to understanding post-modernity : the holocaust . She says of her ethnic Jewish self : "There's always that sense of doom or terror" . 10 Or further : "I think for a Jewish person there is always that sense that you are a traveller in the night"." We mention this only because Warkov seems to be that rarity among contemporary artists : a visionary who has managed to step outside the all-encompassing horizon of the technological dynamo, one who has proceeded to strip its logic down to a minimal, fundamental struggle between exterminism and life. She has the artistic imagination of the survivor. Warkov seems to have a special insight into the different ways that the power of exterminism works : the power of the surveyor (Surveyor of the City of Lost Dreams) to annihilate nature through the imposition of an industrial landscape ; the brutal power of the soldier (Passing Through) evident in the vivid red blood of violence ; the power of Christian culture in Stonewallian's Lament both to screen off the spontaneity of the self, and to silence the sensuousness of nature. The logic of post-modernity, understood as the technological will to mastery, appears in quite different ways in her painting: sometimes as a "gun" (Passing Through), as a "cart" (Rolling Home to Moses), as an urban landscape (Our Lady of the Jewelled Rose) . But all of these are variations on a common central theme : the general struggle of technique against life, rationality against sensuality, violence against culture . In fact, we might say that Warkov poses the key question as to whether or not technological society becomes the equivalent of the power of death over life . Warkov's lament goes beyond an historical remembrance of the loss of precious aspects of experience . Its haunting-effect, what makes it a fascinating indictment and challenge, is that is describes in detail the specific method of exclusion . If she points to the need to overcome historical forgetfulness, then she also describes the geography of this amnesia. Each of her paintings depicts, in almost clinical detail, the origin and consequences of historical forgetfulness in technological society. For example, of Surveyor of the City of Lost Dreams, Warkov writes : A surveyor who is part bird, part man, looks at the city where his secret love applies her lipstick. She is lost in daydreams of her new love and is unaware that she is being watched by the birdman . He is ready to fly to her, aided by the tiny wings on his ankles . We have all been surveyors in the city of lost dreams . This painting offers, perhaps, as vivid and complex a description as could be found of how alienation appears now as seduction in technological society. Warkov can say that we have all lived as "surveyors in the city of lost dreams" because technique does not exist outside of us: in a lifeless,

KROKER/HUGHES machine-world which we can hold separate from our deepest sense of self. For her, "technique is ourselves". Thus, the ideology of consumer culture, the actual text of Surveyor of the City of Lost Dreamy, also speaks the language of sexual desire, and yes, of love. The terrible secret of technological society, in fact, its deepest deprivation, may be that as a mediation of human relationships in the modern century, it becomes utterly invisible to its participants. Technique as screen separates us from nature, from others, from ourselves . It leaves in its way a collage of fragmented identities. This may be why, perhaps, Warkov structures the canvas of City of Lost Dreams in the form of a movie camera or projector. She begins by intimating that consumer culture privileges the image over the actual bodily self, over nature. In this imposition (through the geometric vision of the surveyor) of alienated and fragmented identities, everything holds together through the language of seduction. It is also the human identity which is wagered in this encounter with technique. Surveyor in the City of Lost Dreams begins, in fact, with a doubleseduction. We meet, first, a visual-verbal sexual pun which connects the watching man with a cockerel. This fragment of a man watches a fragment of a naked woman. The sheer physical fragmentation of the painting thus becomes part of a larger spiritual fragmentation which emerges as the theme of the work. The birdman and his secret love relate only through voyeurism for the naked woman serves as a perfect image of a commodity in the market-place . She represents the "come-on" of the technological apparatus in the background of the painting. However, the reduction of the secret love to an "object" in consumer culture has another side. The opposite of pure materialism is represented by the spiritual Venus Celestis figure in the sky. As with the divided identity of the woman, so with the man . We see his alienated "other" spiritual self on the bottom left square canvas . The head-dress on the male symbolises the spiritual even as it suggests the original unalienated culture of native, Indian people . But the alienated surveyor directs his gaze to his "materialistic" love with the levelled telescope, while his theodolite-cum-telescope points upwards to the heavens unused. This material-spiritual difference of focus conveys the sense of deprival at the centre of Warkov's work. We find ourselves in the presence of a rich, figurative art which contrasts at the very different levels the deep divisions in technological society between culture and nature: industrial landscape and flowers ; the geometrical shape of the urban landscape and the organic horizon of the sky ; the lunar image and the Venus Naturalis ; even the organic opposition between the square canvas (a symbol of closure) and the circular canvas (symbol of organic growth) . The nature-culture conflict reveals the surveyor ("we have all been surveyors . . .") to be alienated from his own human nature. Meanwhile,

TECHNOLOGY AND ART predominance of the geometrical forms of the twentieth-century urban factory landscape dominate the land or nature, to reveal the larger social dimensions of his alienation. Putting the scene in historical perspective, Warkov makes the surveyor's foot hang above a simple nineteenth-century building which exists in a balanced relationship with nature. The work in this way tells us that we have been overwhelmed by the materialism (consumer culture) of technological society. The wings on the heel of the surveyor turn him into the Hermes of Greek and the Mercury of Roman mythology. But both gods here become solidly associated with merchant society, Hermes being also the "the messenger of the gods and escort of the dead" . The "City" (a place of trade) joins with the "Lost Dreams" (dead dreams of what might have been) of the title . To say, however, that Warkov paints the "deprivals" of technology does not mean that her artistic imagination dissolves into a relentless fatalism. Quite the contrary . The total effect of her paintings point in the direction not of the pessimistic but the realistic . Warkov seems to say in her work that the horror of technological society must be studied so as to find a way of releasing future beauty. Thus, what is at work in her paintings is a constant struggle between an imposed static, technological order and a surging new, more organic reconciliation of nature and culture . The ideal of listening for the "intimations of deprival" perhaps also produces a way of founding the possibility of a new Eden on precisely that which has been silenced. The painter of human deprival has thus discovered a lost good, not outside technological society, but within it. If we have become the "commandments" of technology, then Warkov tells us that the recovery of meaning begins with the emancipation of those portions of the "self", and of nature, which have been screened-off by technique. The signs of human regeneration appear everywhere in Warkov's paintings. The pregnant woman in Passing Through exists as the symbol of new life, even in the midst of the exterminism of the present . In Rolling Home to Moses, we cannot miss the powerful symbol of the "stag" of freedom (followed by the peasant's gaze). In Ice Dream and in Our Lady of the Jewelled Rose, Warkov employs a common, theatrical device : the separation of the canvas into a square unit to the right and a smaller, circular unit to the left. In both paintings, the square canvas, both in its shapes and in its contents, depicts a decidedly impoverished world; while the circular canvas symbolizes the possibility of "redemption" in history. The temporality of the square canvas works against the circular, eternal ideal of the other . Thus, exactly as in Surveyor in the City of Lost Dreams, the circular canvas of Ice Dream contains a figurative landscape which promises new, dynamic harmony of nature and culture . We find the very same thing with Warkov's choice of colours . Initially, the sheer beauty of the painting seems to be at odds with the choice of 227

KROKER/HUGHES

B:

Warkov, The Scream Room

subject-matter : the "screening-off" of the prairie landscape ; the "resurrection of the dead", almost as in a dream; the haunting image of The Scream Room, where the "scream" represents inner nature tormented by repressive culture . The beauty of Warkov's colours are only a seduction lulling us into her artistic vision, and then forcing, almost unaware, to see the reality of the real world of technology and dependency. At the same time and without contradiction her choice of rich, floral colours dignifies that, even in the midst of pain and exclusion, we live in a world of plenitude . The beauty of her colour thus exists in a dialectical relationship with the less than beautiful reality of the content and themes as a possible and realisable potential . Warkov's artistic imagination offsets the power of the present repressive technological order with the myth of Eden, that realisable secular Eden of the millenarian sects from the Middle Ages down to the present . Warkov recovers in her paintings the language of the myth of Eden as the lost good of our times. Technological Humanism Tony Tascona looks at technology in a different way from Warkov . The perfect embodiment of technological humanism, his method of depth 228

TECHNOLOGY AND ART involvement brings creative participation in the technological experience to a new height. If, a McLuhan claims, the role of the artists in our age becomes prophetic in the sense of providing an early warning of the "psychic and social consequences of new technologies", then Tascona might be viewed as sketching out the history of the future . And he does so in two ways. First, his work has become a single ongoing and dynamic "experiment" with the creative adaptation of new technologies to human survival . Tascona's artistic vision provides the key to understanding the underlying principles of a new, and more organic, reconciliation of technology, nature, and imagination . His work reveals how ecology and technology might be made compatible . And, second, over and beyond the content of his artistic productions, Tascona had developed a "creative method" for responding to the imposition of new technologies : a critical scientific approach to technology which, based on the principles of depth involvement, total participation, and an experimental attitude, may be the only viable human strategy in responding to a bewildering array of new technological inventions . Tascona's approach to technology throws itself into the future and this tells us that his vision of the technological experience reverses but parallels Warkov's . We might indeed say that Tascona and Warkov represent opposite, although complementary, sides of the Canadian mind on the question of technology . Tascona's artistic imagination is future-oriented, experimental, and interventionist. Warkov's perspective, which begins by privileging time as history, shows with Tascona Is perspective a centrifugal and introspective reality. Tascona asserts of his work: "I carry it a step further and say to myself 1 would rather be a landscape - I'd rather go into the landscape, " be a part of it, and come out of it with something . 13 Warkov states the opposite : "I think what I like to do primarily is to interrelate the past and present and make it all seem one. I'd even like to interrelate the past, present and the future and create a whole new world."" To Warkov's fascination with the camera (and thus the images of the past), stands Tascona's opposing claim : "I don't want a camera . I just want to walk and enjoy and experience ... or become agitated . I want something to happen to me. I want some friction" .15 That Tascona throws himself outwards as one of the "poles" of the field of technological experience indicates only that he represents that side of the Canadian mind which privileges extension (the abandonment of a "fixed perspective"), formalism (the study of the "inner structures" of physico-social change), and universalism (the priority of space over time) . While Warkov makes visible _ the "intimations of deprival", the silent horizon of a technological society, Tascona allows us to actually see the "aura" surrounding the internal, minute transformations in bio-social experience. That Tascona and Warkov bring different angles of vision to bear on the technological experience signifies, in the end, that the

KROKER/HUGHES Canadian discourse on technology has become powerful and unique precisely because it contains a plurality of competing, artistic perspectives . And if we can accurately claim with the physicist, Werner Heisenberg (The Physicist's Concept of Nature), "indeterminacy" as the core aspect of the technological experience, then we might also note that one consequence of the principle of indeterminacy allows that contradictory perspectives on the same experience may all be true simultaneously . Like Foucault's "lightning flash", Tascona's work illuminates for an instant the dark obscurity of the world of atoms and cells and tension and flux. This is not a monolithic art for Tascona deliberately chooses fantastic subtlety of colour values and tone registers . As he says of the "close values" of his work: "I would rather not use that many strident values . They sometimes become a way of masking what the subtleties are really supposed to do. Can you imagine all of us walking around with our veins showing in red? Incredible!" 16 But we can discover perhaps another reason for the delicate, geometrical shapes and severe precision of the art. Tascona's imagination has moved beyond the frontiers of the publicly observable contents of experience to a radical exploration of the formal structures of experience . His art cannot be called abstract in the sense that it represents an escape from the "reality" of solid objects conceived in naturalistic terms. Instead, his art "abstracts" the essence, the real, from within a multiplicity of particulars existing in a highly complex world, the real conceived of from a scientific, technological angle, yet thoroughly informed with a humanistic perspective . Consider, for example, Tascona's Seranade, an acrylic lacquer on laminated aluminum piece in the Drache Tascona Collection at the Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba. The work has been well named, for it offers the psychological effect of a gentle, ordered clarity . This gentle quality Tascona captures through form and colour . The white centre arising out of the grey relief base speaks for itself, for white serves as the conventional symbol of purity or life, as opposed to greyness or darkness. Again, the white becomes the ordered music which emerges out of the "silence" of greyness. The balanced series of circles can easily be seen as the abstract expression of notes in a gentle, progressive and harmonious order. Circles traditionally symbolize perfection and the eternal, as opposed to imperfection and the temporal; thus, the geometrical circular shapes operate with the dominant white colour to create the tranquil effect of the work. The very same thing happens with the embossed silkscreen print White Sphere. Here a white sphere sits in a red space with four narrow concentric rings on its outer periphery, two on the white inside which bleed through the white, and two in a darker red outside the sphere itself. This symbolizes the atomic interaction of an object with its environment to stress activity

TECHNOLOGY AND ART and dynamic process rather than passivity . Inside the sphere we discover another example of this with a couple of embossed lines which run horizontally across the top of the sphere. These symbolise the earthly and the temporal and they push the circle downwards . Surging up towards this, a series of embossed "V" shaped lines thrust against the horizontal lines to suggest a tension between vertical and horizontal elements, between temporality and eternality, between dependency and freedom. What finally is this, though, but a perfect visual expression of the ebb and flow of gravity itself? Tascona seeks to concentrate the medium of technology : he does this to illustrate the high drama that takes place in the invisible world of technology turned inside out. He wishes to evoke a psychological response to the internal rules of order of the bio-social world, and to the sheer beauty (and formal elegance) of the "dynamic tension", the "edge" which results when technique, space and imagination come together as worlds in collusion . Tascona wishes to fulfill the Medieval promise of technology: to make an experiment again of the technological imagination. His work discloses that human freedom, which in any event cannot be separated from participation in technological experience, can only be renewed on the basis of a creative rethinking of the human relationship to technology. We have here the best of the technological imaginations : the precise point where technology becomes, once more, a way of humanising the world, a way of seeing ourselves in the mirror of technology.

C:

Tascona, Re-entry

That Tascona can join freedom and technology may be due to his participation in depth in the actual "craftsmanship" of technology. Having worked for a number of years as a technician in the Air Canada shops at Winnipeg, 23 1

KROKER/HUGHES he had on-the-job training and became a shop floor expert in the theory and practice of plating and related chemico-electrical processes . To untrained eyes the act of plating appears to be a sort of mechanical process in which a piece of metal placed in the liquid of a tank takes on a new appearance, just as it would if put into a tank of paint. The educated imagination, however, sees intricate and controlled non-visual processes at work, a scientific structure of matter and transition which consists of largely empty space "filled" with electrical charges, but almost in reverse image . As he says when he describes his first reactions to the "surface tensions" at work in the act of plating : "I became very interested in all the organic structures, the transitions that took place, and the transition was magic to me. It has a kind of aura that really mystified me" ." Tascona has translated that original sense of the "mystical, spiritual quality" in the transitions of simple forms, simple shapes, into an elegant series of artistic visions of the "inner structure" of change. The primitive act of "seeing" techno-scientific processes at work seems to have been literally swept up into this art object and reproduced as a taut and highly delicate series of "meditations" on the structure of experience. Tascona's imagination thus becomes a creative mediation between the natural and industrial landscape and the student of his work. This is the painter who can "see" the invisible "surface tensions" as process : in bodily chemistry, in the physical landscape, in industrial processes . For example, many Tascona paintings during the 1960's use sculptured bas relief effects obtained through the building up of surfaces around carefully placed tapes, a practice that Tascona continues to present in his more hard-edged geometrical work. The origin of this technique as practice belongs to his experience in the Air Canada workshops . The source of the sculptures painted line as idea in white has other implications . Apparently producing sculptured two-dimensional works of abstraction in accordance with the modernist distrust of three dimensionalty in the first (late sixties) phase of his native style, still in fact, stayed close to the landscape, but it was landscape viewed from above. The influence - and it was an unconscious one - came from flying over the Manitoba landscape at relatively low altitudes (an experience we can still undertake to produce sights that are uncannily like a series of Tascona painting of this period) . Between 1956-71 while he was with Air Canada, Tascona flew regularly on airline passes as well as privately . On these occasions he absorbed and appropriated the landscape which then emerged in two forms of painting: the textures, organic works of the early sixties which capture the Pre-Cambrian north of Manitoba and Western Ontario ; and the more geometrical works of sculptured fields, rivers, roads and air strips of the Manitoba plains landscape seen from above which he produced in the latter half of the 1960's . These phases were by way of a preparation for his entry into the structures of 232

TECHNOLOGY AND ART things as processes which brought with it an upward and joyous shift in colour value. Tascona's ability to experience technology as a matter of the "dynamics of controlled precision" finds no more elegant depiction than in his silkscreen print, Re-entry . At first, this work captures our attention as a visual representation of space flight. Tascona strips away any suggestion of heroic individualism through his abstract, non-figurative approach. On the basis of his experience in the aero-space industry, he realised that contemporary technology can only be a collective effort and therefore has no room for heroic individualism . Thus, the controlled precision of the lines points to the precise technology and collective labour that alone made space flight possible. And, as an artist of "surface tensions", Tascona sets the colours and lines of Re-entry in opposition to one another . The red symbolized the heat of re-entry and the double layer of red in a downward direction suggests the heat shield and capsule respectively. Tascona's horizontal and vertical lines set in tension against each other recall the jet directional guidance system of the space capsules . Rather than individual heroic action, we have very carefully calculated and precise collective process at work here. The recovery of the promise of technology begins with a very different way of seeing mechanics and engineering. Tascona says: "there's beauty in mechanics, and there's beauty in engineering . Everything depends on the applications of the creative imagination ." For him, "When you are casting in resin you can see the transitions taking place, and you can see the transformations . You can actually see the transformations from a liquid to a solid" . He always works towards the "crescendo", for as he says: "You can also watch things pyramid . You watch them - you watch them actually reach a peak, they become very empirical . They have to crest! It's the order I'm interested in, and everything has an order ." 1 a Interiors perfectly illustrates the "order" evinced by Tascona . We find at work here a dynamic ecological relationship between the artist and his technical creation ; and then, by implication, between Interiors and ourselves. What appears to be a serene, placid production reveals itself to be, at any moment, the focus of rapidly changing relationships . There is, at first, the purely experimental relationship between the artist and his product . Tascona says of casting in resin: "I actually work backwards to my end result . I have to build up that layer on layer and tension on tension. I never get away from the tension part. There's always anger there and hidden energy" . And further : "It's a very personal thing ... You're always riding the edge . .. You're operating on that border line which is interesting" . z What do we have here, then, but the method of involvement in depth and total participation? and no distinction emerges between Tascona's experimental attitude towards art and his personal life. Most strikingly, his verbal comments

KROKER/HUGHES during interviews indicate a deep continuity between bodily experience, daily life and artistic creation. Thus, Tascona moves continuously from an analysis of underlying chemical processes of change to comments on his own "bodily chemistry", from the "transitions that take place in this country" to transitions in mobiles as they filter light at different points of the day . As he remarks: "You can leave the house, go for your walk and by the time you get back the temperature may have dropped thirty degrees or gone up thirty degrees or fifty. And this is the kind of change that I really enjoy, because it does something to my bodily chemistry and (as soon as that happens) it comes out in my work" ."

D:

We can draw another side to Interiors when we viewed it as a perfect model of ecology . Tascona insists that in dealing with the environment, he wants to see transitions taking place: "I deal with light. I want to see something change; I want to change the whole mood, the whole concept of structure, by adding something in it that doesn't take away from the structure" . By bringing nature (in the form of the play of light on the hanging sphere), art mediates between nature and building as technology. The success of Interiors as technology can be attributed precisely to the fact that it serves as a creative and unobtrusive mediation between structure (the . building) and nature (the changing rays of exterior sunlight on the ,resin) . Interior thus always changes! Depending upon the time of day or night (and thus the disappearance or reappearance of the sun) and the location (state

Tascona, Interiors

TECHNOLOGY AND ART of attention) of the viewer, Interiors undergoes a continuous transformation, almost in an organic harmony with the tempo of human and natural activity. Interiors gives to nature that which is nature's and to technology that which is technology's . It accommodates the biologically and physically given to the socially created and made. This process makes Tascona the creator, the embodiment of a technological humanism . Technological Realism A third, powerful perspective on technology in the Manitoba vision we can call the artistic vision of technological realism . This expression of the visual imagination - the relationship of technology, landscape, and society - situates itself midway between the poles of lament (technological dependency) and utopia (technological humanism) . If Warkov provides a series of haunting images of the tragic aspect of modern technology, and if Tascona explores the prospects for creative freedom in the development of a new approach to understanding technology, then technological realism exists as a dynamic synthesis of these contrasting perspectives on technology. As a "way of seeing" technology the realist perspective shares fully in the lament for the suppression of historical traditions by the ruthless imposition of the culture and economy of advanced technological society. Its psychological force produces initially a profound and overwhelming impression of despair . But technological realism also refers to a dynamic meeting in the artistic imagination of past and future, domination and freedom, resignation and creation. So just at the moment that it threatens to dissolve into a paralyzing sense of moral grief for that which has been lost in the comingto-be of technological society, at that precise instant it gets suddenly pulled into the future, and hope, by the promise of an emancipatory technology. The peculiar agony, and certainly the source of the great creativity, of technological realism is that it is a product of an ongoing struggle between the "warring" perspectives of technology as domination and freedom . In the artistic vision of technological realism we suddenly move into something entirely new and unpredictable! At any moment, the realist perspective exists as the forward edge of the continuing "reconciliation" in the Canadian discourse between the extremes of utopia (cultural imagination) and dependency (historical imagination) . Technological realism might, in fact, be interpreted as an almost literal, psychological read-out of the Canadian mind, on where we stand as a political community between the poles of domination and emancipation, between instrumentalism and finalism . This troubled artistic perspective becomes a controversial and brilliant record of the "thinking out" in Canadian society of the relationship between technology and civilisation .

TECHNOLOGY AND ART Two Manitoba artists exemplify the perspective of technological realism : Don Proch and Ivan Eyre. Proch has pioneered the use of the mask to express the paradoxical and ambivalent interplay of technology and the prairie landscape . Not incidental to understanding the method of Proch's realism is the incipiently populist political-social basis of that method which we find as the Ophthalmia Company collection. Since his first, major exhibition in Winnipeg in the early seventies, Proch has worked whenever possible with a group of friends and relatives who band together as The Ophthalmia Company of Inglis, Manitoba . Ophthalmia is not a legal corporation, but in the genuine populist sense a community of friends held together by the pioneer values of solidarity and mutual self-help . Ophthalmia itself means inflammation of the eye or its appendages . In the vast, new world opened up by Proch's imagination, everything becomes ophthalmia, or eye irritation. Proch commonly takes familiar scenes, objects, concepts and distorts them in order (a) to break the patterns of habit that prevent us from seeing social reality clearly or (b) to force us to "see" experience so as to create a proper remembrance of the past (rural) even as it is brought under the influence (technological and urban) of the present . In fact, the Ophthalmia Company inflames the eye of the viewer only to shift his mechanisms of perception, to transform the way in which he actually "looks" at the world. Proch insists that we learn anew how to look directly at our own technological reality ; and, specifically, at the complex relationship among technique, community and space . As Proch says of his artistic productions : "I work high-technology in with some remnants of the past: fibre optics, laser beams, together with bones ".24 In his work, the future (of high-technology) rubs against the past (the remembrance of the Aessippi experience) ; an utopia of formal beauty grates against the sheer despair of contents . Everything functions to express the "tension" in society between past and future . But Proch does not emerge as the artist of either lament or of utopia: his singular imagination fuses despair and fascination into a new vision of the human situation . He is, in fact, the "Innis" of Canadian art: the artist who, however, unconsciously, has expressed in the language of visual art the essential insight achieved by Harold Innis in Empire and Communications . In that work, Innis says we must view the history of technology as coeval with the unfolding of western civilisation . And it has been in the specific sense that the inhabitants western civilisation have always experienced technology as a warring struggle between "centrifugal and centripetal forces", between time and space. Innis tells us that "Concentration on a medium of communication implies a bias in the cultural development of the civilisation concerned either towards an emphasis on space and political organisation or towards an emphasis on time and religious .organisation" .zs All of Proch's works, in 23 6

TECHNOLOGY AND ART some measure, express an eloquent and searing tension between time and space, between power and remembrance, in the meeting of modern technology and the prairie landscape . And what makes Proch the authentic artist of the "New World" is that, in his work, everything hangs in balance, nothing has been settled . The protracted struggle over the fate of technology, whether it will be an emancipatory experience or an instrument of domination, remains to be decided. There is always a lightning quick reversal in Proch's work. He shows us that the interplay of technology and landscape contains contradictory possibilities, and this simultaneously. All depends on our ability to see clearly, without flinching, technological dependency, and to have the courage to act . In this regard, Proch emerges very much as existentialist in the tradition of the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre . Sartre insisted that human freedom begins with the understanding that while we always remain implicated in the human situation, the crucial task of free human beings must be to attempt to transcend their situation, to become the creative agents rather than the dupes of history. In the end, individual Canadians become the wild cards, the undecided fate, in the technological experience. We can catch something of this ambivalence in Proch's understanding of technology in his use of the mask as a way of representing artistically the struggle in the prairie experience between tradition and technocracy, between time and space. Proch's series of masks perfectly express the warring possibilities in the technological experience . On the one hand, the masks (Prairie Plough Mask, Manitoba Mining Mask, Chicken Bone Mask) offer as starkly a realistic, as grisly an image as could be found of the overwhelming effect of technocracy in reworking the landscape of nature and the human mind. To the extent that what appears on the outside of the mask signifies what the mind sees from the inside, we come as close as possible to what the Canadian thinker, Edmund Carpenter, warned would be the human fate when confronted with the power of technology : "They became what they beheld" .z6 Proch's masks visually represent the impact of the industrial technology "massaging" the human brain, and suppressing both organic nature and human imagination . They are almost suffocating images of life in contemporary society. Proch thus provides nothing less than a deep, psychological insight into the functioning of modern technology. The loss of that which is most precious in human experience (Proch speaks always of the need for "remembrance") seems almost irrecoverable . Death lurks everywhere within Proch's work : the mining shafts as "eyes" in Manitoba Mining Mask; the hands sticking out of the muskeg in Walking Plow; the skull image in Prairie Plough Mask. But the search for the source of the tension lead us to another meaning of the masks . When Adele Freedman (Saturday Night) heads an article with the words "Don Proch is the shaman of prairie art", she does so because the 23 7

KROKER/HUGHES

E:

Proch, Manitoba Mining Mark

mask has a symbolic, mythological meaning. This shamanistic quality of the mask has been described eloquently by Karyn Allen in her review of Proch's contribution to an important exhibit : The Winnipeg Perspective 1981 RITUAL:

F:

Proch, Rainbow Mark

238

TECHNOLOGY ANDART The donning of the mask as a means of summoning an absent spirit is a central practice ofshamanistic rites . The ritual implication is that, by the wearing of the mask, one exchanges identities with the spirit implied by the mask's symbols and images. In several of "Proch's own masks there is an implied interchange, or fusion, between the human and imagistic elements . In other of his masks, the shamanistic notion of the mask as protection from the evil spirits might be inferred. The Manitoba Mining Mask is an obvious example.z' Proch's masks, in a profound sense, summon "forth . .. the spirit of the land"za Proch, in fact, makes the exchange of identities implied by the "donning of the mask" explicit when he describes the "clouds as brains" and emphasises that there is always "a relationship to the eyes' ' .29 "The idea of the landscape on the head just came from a vision of the prairies where you relate to it at eye level . It's almost like 360 degree peripheral vision, so that even though you are looking at one area you have a sense of what's around you and behind you . It's much the same as turning on a turntable, except the " inverse of that . 30 The mask serves the purpose of "rethinking" the relationship between human purpose (technology) and environment in the prairie experience . Here technology itself (the human presence in reworking the land) becomes the third dimension of the prairie environment . Proch says: "I consider my pieces three dimensional drawings . Drawing the landscape in three dimensions is again a way of being aware totally of your environment or of trying to get as close to it as you can" . 3l If Proch can correctly be called "the shaman of prairie art", then, it is because in meditating on the dialectical interplay (the "fusion" of identities) between the environment and technology, he has actually articulated a new language of seeing . Proch masks, by forcing us to become "aware totally" of the environment, mark also the beginning of along, human recovery. They suggest that the environment (Inglis View Mask, Rainbow Mask, Prairie Nude) works its effects silently, but relentlessly, by providing its inhabitants with a different way of seeing. And by seeking to make us aware of the impact of industrial technologies in "screening off" the environment, Proch appeals to the spirit of the land itself for assistance in the delicate process of "healing damaged human personalities . Ultimately, Proch's work has an important therapeutic value . It's the very same with the artistic imagination of Ivan Eyre . This Canadian artist has created a series of mythological painting ofpost-modern society (Moos-0-Men, Birdmen) which seem almost unspeakable because they force to the surface of our consciousness the deep archetypes at work in technocratic society. In much the same way as Freud said of Leonardo da

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G:

Proch, Night Landing

Vinci, we might remark of Eyre that he woke "to find himself in the middle " of the nightmare that he thought he was only dreaming . 32 Eyre says, in fact, of his "mythological" paintings that their dominant themes move and play at the edge of "distant madnesses". "They (distant madnesses) usually occur on the horizon line out of my touch, out of my reach, which is the way I see violence as never having happened to me directly, but as always out there somewhere".33 The painter of "distant madnesses", Eyre expresses his perspective on technology in a different language of painting from that of Proch's . But, we can see the artistic visions of Proch and Eyre to be similar to the extent that both disclose a nightmarish account of modern society, a society - in its technocratic dimension - which they reveal to be ghoulish, demonic, and a matter of dead souls . Eyre's work compels us to see, perhaps for the first time, the dark side of technocratic society. While Proch has recourse to the rich imagery of the mask as a way of shattering normal vision ; Eyre's imagination has roots in the language of archetypes. He introduces us to a dream-like state which forces us further and further back in time, always in search of the deep, and monstrous, symbolism released by technocratic society. Eyre says of the method of his strictly mythological paintings : "Each viewpoint tends to live in a long, horizontal rectangle ; and as one moves from one demarcation line to the next, one tends to shiftfrom one time sequence to another as you move up the canvas" . His paintings evince an almost single-minded fascination with the archetypes of modern experience. This leads Eyre to state his main concern, which run through the landscape and mythological works, to be the "basic form irrespective of

TECHNOLOGY AND ART subject" . 34 While Proch employs the mask as a way of evoking the "dual landscape" inherent in the meeting of technology/ nature in the prairie environment, Eyre deals in the more ambiguous language of "metamorphosis" . His works act as an "early warning system" which states explicitly that in equating human freedom with the release of the "dynamic energies" of technology, we may have, however inadvertently, released demons beyond our control . The ancient myth of Prometheus works behind Eyre's imagination. His paintings hint, over and over, that we have yet to pay the price for our technological domination of nature. The technoscope has allowed us to be promethean, or god-like, in the sense of extending, almost without limits, our control over human and non-human nature. But now, just as the Canadian theorist of technology, Eric Havelock, said in his classic study, The Myth of Prometheus, the other side of the "dream" of Prometheus reveals itself . The dark side of the promethean dream, the "will to technology", shows itself to contain the seeds of destruction. The future doom of society motivated by an unlimited urge to mastery lay hidden and already foretold in its past . The "metamorphosis" (Moos-0-Men, Birdmen), a constant theme of Eyre's imagination, only says that a sure and certain doom awaits those civilisations which disregard the limits of tolerance of social and nonsocial nature . Eyre becomes a technological realist because, like Proch, his work evinces a profound ambivalence . In Proch's work, the oscillation between technological humanism and technological dependency, appears most strikingly in the vast difference of themes between the threatened landscape ofManitoba Mining Mask and the organic unity of Rainbow Nude and the unsettling effect of Night Landing. In Eyre's imagination, the warring struggle between the contrasting impulses to utopia and dependency is even more striking . It's the clash of perspectives between the "mythological" paintings and the almost "mystical" painting of Hill Mist or Sky Pass. The sharp transition in Eyre's vision between the nightmare of the past (Moos-0Men, Birdmen) and the utopia of the spirit (Sky Pass) resembles the earlier work of another Canadian painter, Lawren Harris . Like Eyre, Harris's work also moved between an earlier phase of naturalism (the artistic analogue of dependency) and a later stage of mystical (idealistic) paintings, guided by the religious humanism of theosophy. The genius of Eyre lies in his ability to harmonise the geometric, "cool" lines of abstraction (the sine qua non of the technological experience) and the organic flow of the natural landscape . His paintings suggest that human intervention (technique) in the environment should work, not to produce a boring flatness of effect, but a paradise of "high contrasts" . This is most explicit in Sky Pass. Of this painting, Eyre has said that here is a "contrast 241

KROKER/HUGHES

H:

Eyre, Birdmen

and conflict in the processes which make for a kind of drama in it. The trapezoid embodies a work that the surrounding space can't really embody" .35 We might say, that for Eyre, the relationship between technology and nature should always have something about it that resembles the relationship between art and experience . "They are separate realities . And as soon as we begin to confuse art experience with our everyday life, then " I feel less enchanted with it. I'm not as interested . 3G The secret of Eyre's imagination is his wonderful capacity to take us by surprise; to teach us, in effect the preciousness of a world view which works by "creating surprises", "foils", in order to provide another, perhaps richer, perspective on nature and life. And so, Sky Pass takes us by surprise; it draws out the magisterial quality of the mountain landscape by introducing the "high contrast" of the space-like trapezoid . "The impetus (for the trapezoid) had to do with a sensation I had while travelling through the mountains ; of imagining my spirit to be running free through the valley. (It's) another way of moving through that space, perhaps opposite to the lateral movements that are going on in the rest of the painting. It's a way of getting up and through that central area in, dare I say, a spiritual or elevated state" . 37 To the extent that the recovery of a substantive, as opposed to instrumental, approach to technology depends upon a new way of thinking about the complex relationship of nature, community, and technique, then Eyre is also 242

TECHNOLOGY AND ART instructive in developing an alternative "language of technology" . What Eyre has to say about the language of painting applies directly to rethinking the fundamentals of the technology experience . Eyre argues, and this very eloquently, that "in the painting, intellect without feeling is meaningless . All the human emotions have to be within the language of painting " .38 The "purpose" of painting is neither to submerge itself in life (thus Eyre says

G:

Eyre,Sky Pass

that art and life are different) nor is it to remain detached from "social problems". For Eyre, painting should remain abstract in the precise sense that "the abstract mind is the mind moving at full tllt" .39 And a mind "functioning at full tilt" is one which fuses imagination and environment in such a way as "to build something that in some ways suggests the future" . Eyre seeks a "language of painting" which, in an entirely realistic fashion, draws out the radiant energy of the human being .4 I don't think of a human being as a silhouette with a head on top, two arms, a torso in the middle with two legs. I see it as something far more complicated and complex and unknowable . Almost an energy system with changing viewpoints, where the spaces outside the figure are invited into the interior as a real physical force, rather than letting the figure be the reality and the space beyond simply the background.4' In Eyre's viewpoint, the language of painting aims at grasping the inner structure of society, of individual human reality, by working its way inside them. The painter is most creative when he is isolated within society, not

KROKER/HUGHES outside of it. And thus, the "language of painting" works it effects as a creative agency within society by insisting on the dynamic "symmetry" of human experience . "(It's like) borders within borders, and boxes within boxes, where there is a kind of core; and things fold out from that (core) or come in again : like a flower, opening and closing" ." Now, Eyre's approach to painting as a way of blasting through ideologies and of uncovering a "multitude of perspectives" within the human situation, also provides a vital key to the creation of a new language of technology. If, finally, George Grant is correct in saying the "technique is ourselves", then, perhaps, we have to rethink technique in the creative imagery of Canadian artists . By implication, Eyre would tell us that a substantive understanding of technology would begin by insisting that social productions set in motion a dynamic process of self-transcendence and self-fulfillment . A worthwhile technology would be like the trapezoid in Sky Pass: it would express in dynamic form the inner beauty of life and nature, while providing, at the same time, a "high contrast" with the present human predicament . It would be realistic in the sense of speaking to real human needs; and, simultaneously, it would make demands on the human imagination . Like a painting which draws together the pure "mental formations" of the intellect with almost primitive human feelings, technique would represent a "dynamic synthesis" of morality, intellect, economy, and feeling . And the ultimate objective of a substantive technology? If Eyre is correct, it might, in fact, be erroneous to think in terms of an extrinsic end for technology which would stand apart from actual, lived experience . Technology might better be rethought as a creative process, each phase of which would be intended to amplify the "radiant energies" of human beings and to connect again to an inner harmony of structure and history between the land and its people. The Mirror of Technology Considered not as a static event but as a creative process, the technological experience would fulfil the promise and the challenge inherent in the works of Proch and Eyre . A creative technology would explode closed ideological systems and provide for the generation of a "multitude of perspectives" on the human situation . And the means towards the ideal of technology as a creative process? Nothing other, of course, than the challenge of rethinking the technological experience from the dynamic perspective of the "language of painting" . It may be that Proch and Eyre have shown us more than the "mirror of technology" ; their ambiguity, what makes their work fascinating, is precisely that there is also an inner curvature in the mirror of technology. It's not just a matter of living in a transitional age in which everything is 244

TECHNOLOGY AND ART easily divisible into past and future, and into remembrance and possibility. It is now the human fate to live in a fully ambiguous and contradictory age : an age in which the historical lament of Esther Warkov can exist simultaneously with the dynamic utopia of Tony Tascona for the simple reason that both are true simultaneously. If "technique is ourselves" then it is also the human fate that we witness being played out in the mirror of technology. And, to the extent that we stand with Eyre in a nightmarish world which is literally flying apart at the seams, a world in which the "centre can no longer hold" and, with Proch, on the forward edge of a new human possibility: well, to the extent that contradiction is our fate, then everything depends, as it always has and ever will, on the human courage to think the world anew in the ambivalent language of painting . Political Science Concordia University English St John's College University of Manitoba List of Illustrations A: Warkov, Surveyor in the City of Lost Dreams B: Warkov, The Scream Room C: Tascona, Re-entry D: Tascona, Interiors E: Proch, Manitoba Mining Mask F: Proch, Rainbow Mask G: Proch, Night Landing H :Eyre, Birdmen I: Eyre, Sky Pass

Notes For a more elaborate description of the Canadian discourse on technology, see Arthur Kroker, Technology andthe Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant, St . Martin's Press: New York, 1985/ New World Perspectives : Montreal, 1984 . For a more intensive description of the artistic productions of six contemporary Manitoba artists, see KennethJ. Hughes,Manitoba Art Monographs, Winnipeg, 1982 . This article is also being published in French translation ("Technologie et art emancipatoire: la vision nzanitobaine") in Sociologie et Societe, Universite de Montreal (Winter, 1986).

The interviews with Tony Tascona, Esther Warkov, Don Proch and Ivan Eyre were conducted by TV Ontario, and used as background material for the development of a series on Canadian artists titled Visions (1983) .

KROKER/HUGHES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11 . 12 . 13 . 14 . 15 . 16 . 17 . 18. 19. 20 . 21 . 22 . 23 . 24. 25 . 26 . 27 . 28 . 29 . 30 . 31 . 32 . 33 . 34 . 35 . 36 . Marshal McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Klan, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965, p. 57 . Ibid., p. 65 . Ibid., p. 64 . Ibid ., p. 66 . George Grant, Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America, Toronto: House of Anansi, 1969, p. 40 . Esther Warkov,'"Feature Interview", Arts Manitoba, Volume 2, Number 1, (Fall, 1982), p. 11 . Ibid., p. 13 . Ibid., p. 9. John Berger, Ways of Seeing, New York : Viking Press, 1973 . Ibid., p. 10 . Ibid., p. 10 . Kenneth J. Hughes, Manitoba Art Monographs, Winnipeg, Manitoba, p. 39 . Tony Tascona, Visions interview, p. 7. Ester Warkov, loc. cit., note 6, p. 12 . Tascona, Visions interview, pp . 1-2. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 5 . Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid ., p. 3 . Don Proch, Visions interview, p. 3. Ibid. HaroldInnis,EmpireandCommunications,Toronto :UniversityofTorontoPress, 1972, p .170 . Edmund Carpenter, They Became What They Beheld, New York: Ballentine Books, 1976 . Karyn Allen, The Winnipeg Perspective, 1981 : Ritual, p. 12 . Ibid. Don Proch, Visions interview, pp . 2-3 . Ibid ., p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. S. Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, New York : Vintage, 1947 . Ivan Eyre, Visions interview, p. 5. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 7. -

TECHNOLOGY AND ART

37 . 38 . 39. 40. 41 . 42 . Ibid ., p . 9. Ibid ., p . G . Ibid ., p . 4 . Ibid ., p . 10. Ibid ., p . 11 . Ibid ., p . 10 .

Canadian Journal o/ Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale, Volume X, N. 1-2 (1986) .

ESCAPING EXTINCTION : CULTURAL DEFENCE OF AN UNDEFENDED BORDER*

John Meisel
Much has been written, and even more said, about what constitutes the Canadian character, what identifies the quintessential Canadian. A defini-. tive answer continues to elude us, but two features clearly emerge as dominant elements in the make-up of both French- and English-speaking members of our family: we are constantly brooding over who we are, what gives us our Canadian character, and what makes us different from other nationals . Most of the latter never think about such things or take the answers for granted. Secondly, we share a keen awareness of, interest in, and concern with all things American, that is, with the U.S.A. Popular culture, sports, politics, even tourist attractions south of the border are part of the mental map of most Canadians and are frequently as important to us, if not more so, than corresponding indigenous realities . Inside every Canadian, whether she or he knows it or not, there is, in fact, an American. The magnitude and effect of this American presence in us all varies considerably from person to person, but it is ubiquitous and inescapable . The economic dependence of Canada on the United States only exacerbates this state of affairs . Economic issues usually arouse the greatest interest and controversy ; they are viewed from a variety of perspectives, depending on current problems and fashions . Right now, the debate about sectorial free trade is privileged, and it is an awesome matter, to be sure. But other aspects of our uneasily shared and separated lives are equally important. I shall deal with one of these and shall take a leaf out of the economists' book by also adopting a sectorial approach . The sector explored in this lecture is our culture and our cultural relations, particularly one manifestation of them. 248

ESCAPING EXTINCTION You may think that the wording of my title - "Escaping Extinction" is a trifle hysterical and that to link Canadians, even if only potentially, to the dinosaur, the passenger pigeon, or the dodo ignores the fact that there is a dance or two left in us yet. The greatest threat to Canada lies in the possibility (some might even say "probability") that, as the result of the strong presence of American influences, our cultural development may be stunted . As I have suggested, U.S. styles, ideas and products are never far away. There is, alas, a well-grounded fear that as a consequence, our perceptions, values, ideas and priorities will become so dominated by those of our neighbours that the distinctiveness of Canada will, to all intents and purposes, vanish . The danger is greater with respect to anglophones than francophones, but even the latter have cause for alarm. Canada's cultural vulnerability vis-a-vis the U .S . is manifest everywhere. Book publishing, the periodical press, film production and distribution, comic books, the record industry, theatre, dance, popular and so-called classical music - all have been dominated by foreign influences in Canada. The indigenous product has had an exceedingly hard time getting started and surviving . This was so, in English Canada at least, largely because of the absence of a suitable native infrastructure and of an indigenous tradition, and because of the easy accessibility of, first, British cultural goods, and later, U.S. counterparts. The facts are only too well known, even if the solutions do not always leap readily to the mind. No form of cultural activity so clearly displays Canada's cultural dilemmas, and their implications for Canadian-American relations, as the field of communications . This critical and ever more important area is immensely complex . It encompasses such diverse aspects as trans-border data flows, the transnational character of satellite footprints, the allocation of scarce slots for communications birds in the geostationary orbit, and the implications of one country's being dependent on another with respect to computer hardware and software . More important still, it embraces the field of broadcasting. All of broadcasting, but television in particular, has the most far-reaching effect on the minds of individuals and therefore on the nature of human society. TV is by far the most popular of all the media, engaging, on the average, the attention of Canadians for more than three hours a day. Children spend more time before the little screen than in the presence of teachers . Dominant perceptions of ourselves, of others, of this country and its neighbours, of desirable life-styles, of national and world affairs, of different ethnic, religious, and social groups, of the diverse regions at home and abroad - perceptions of all these things are profoundly influenced by the programming available and watched on television . No wonder then that this medium is a uniquely powerful force in the socialization of individuals and in the formation of collective attitudes, values and aspirations . 249

JOHN MEISEL And television is, as we all know, predominantly, even overwhelmingly American. This fact is of absolutely central significance in the state and development not only of Canada's culture but also of the country's perception of, and relations with, the United States . It is, therefore, imperative that we understand fully why we are so dependent on the United States and what we can do to ensure that the electronic media serve the best individual and collective interests of Canadians . There are at least six major factors explaining why Canada is so vulnerable to the television world of the U .S. First, the physical proximity of so many Canadians to the U.S. border places a vast majority of the population within the reception area of American signals with the aid of only a cheap rooftop antenna. New technologies, particularly cable, and more recently satellites, have placed almost the whole of the country within reach of American programming. Secondly, eighty per cent of Canadians speak English and therefore have no problem in savouring the consumer culture produced south of the border. Thirdly, the American entertainment industry is the most vital and vivacious in the world. Growing largely out of the enormously successful and widely applauded American film industry, television programs and stars found easy acceptance everywhere. American television has from the beginning and until the advent of PBS in the late 'sixties been conceived as a commercial medium whose major role is to deliver audiences to advertisers . The content has therefore been designed, and with consummate skill, to appeal to the larges possible audiences . While this may leave something to be desired aesthetically, or in terms of the educational potential of the medium, it has unquestionably produced immensely popular shows . The format and type of drama originated by the American entertainment industry have in the most recent era created a new universal art form which is claiming something close to a world-wide audience . Successful genres of drama as typified by Dallas, for example, have not only led to imitations domestically and massive-sales in scores of countries, but are actually being copied in communities which in no way resemble the United States . America, having given us the western, has now presented the world with a vastly popular new theatrical form claiming widespread acceptance. The fourth cause of Canada's vulnerability to U.S. television is probably the most telling . It concerns the economics of television programming and particularly of drama production . It costs about one million dollars to produce a one-hour show like Dallas. American networks can afford this expense because it can be amortized in their vast and rich domestic market. Having paid for themselves at home, these programs can then be offered to foreign, including Canadian, purchasers for from three to six per cent of their cost (Juneau) . Although the money spent on a program certainly does 25 0

ESCAPING EXTINCTION not guarantee its quality, it is impossible to present consistently shows comparable to the best American dramas without spending very large sums on them. But the size of the Canadian market does not permit the same investment in indigenous productions as is possible in the States . Even the CBC can only afford to offer its English viewers less than two hours of original Canadian drama a week. The rest of the time the insatiable hunger for entertainment of our audiences can only be met from foreign sources or old stock. As for the private broadcasters, their involvement in the production of Canadian drama is insignificant . One reason is obvious : they can acquire the rights to wildly popular American shows for very much less than the cost of comparable Canadian ones. It therefore makes very little economic sense for commercial broadcasters to try to program Canadian dramas . The importance of this matter cannot be exaggerated . Fifty per cent of Canadian viewing hours are devoted to drama, but only four per cent of the available shows in this category are Canadian. Films, soap operas, sit-coms and TV plays are at least as important in influencing perceptions and values as public affairs, and yet the menu offered our viewers in this most popular type of programming is, in part because of the facts I just described, almost totally foreign . Historical antecedents are also responsible for the strong presence in Canadian homes of American programs . They are the fifth factor we need to note. Television made its way south of the forty-ninth parallel in the 1940s. "The year 1948 is commonly accepted as the turning point when TV emerged as a mass medium and the U.S . networks changed their emphasis from radio to television." (Peers, C in C, 20) Canada only authorized the new medium in 1952, after the release of the Report of the Massey Commission. In the first instance, service was provided only by the CBC and its affiliates, but in the early 'sixties CTV was licensed and provided an alternative source of programs in many parts of the country. Television broadcasting was, of course, regulated in hopes that the broadcasting system would, in the words of the 1958 Broadcasting Act, be "basically Canadian in content and character." Viewers who bought sets before the inauguration of the CBC's service were able to watch U.S. shows and this, in a sense, established expectations and patterns which could not be ignored later. Both the CBC and the private broadcasters realized that they would only win and hold viewers, so many of whom could receive signals from abroad, if they themselves offered many of the most popular American programs; the appetite for these therefore became deeply ingrained . Free marketeers argue that in commercial broadcasting it is the viewers' tastes which determine programming . In fact, of course, the reverse normally occurs. The shows available shape tastes, and 25 1

JOHN MEISEL in our case it was essentially American television fare which had formed the preferences of Canadian audiences . This brings me to the last factor to be noted accounting for our vulnerability to American cultural influences. It would be foolish to ascribe the popularity of entertainment provided by CBS, NBC, ABC or PBS to its being crammed down reluctant Canadian throats . On the contrary, a great many Canadians have an avid thirst for most things American and feel perfectly at home being surrounded by them. This applies not only to anglophones but also to francophones, as their mass annual exodus to Florida, among other things, shows . The fact that these sentiments are induced in part by the hype emanating from Hollywood and the U.S. entertainment industry makes the Canadian empathy no less genuinely felt. Although we have inadequate evidence to permit firm assertions, it looks as if the affinity for our neighbour's culture is not shared equally among all groups of Canadians . A mass-elite dichotomy is evident, with the better educated, higher-income groups being more sensitive to Canadian-American cultural differences and more interested in indigenous cultural products . One consequence of this phenomenon is that the more low-brow an American cultural activity, the wider its appeal in Canada . Similarly, it is largely Canadians with middle- and upper-class backgrounds and with middle- and highbrow tastes who are concerned with the health and viability of Canadian culture . A nationalist foreign cultural policy is therefore more likely to appeal to a minority of the population . Canadians not only like American programs; they also believe that they are entitled to have full access to them. This strongly held view compelled the CRTC to enable Canadian cable systems to carry the programs of American stations, and it has weakened the government's will to block the widespread pirating of American shows carried on satellites . Not only individuals and companies but also municipalities, sometimes supported by Members of Parliament and provincial governments, have resorted to the unauthorized reception of U.S . signals, many of which are meant to be available only to bona fide subscribers . The result of being so exposed to other people's electronic offerings is that it is extremely difficult for our own programs to be made and to be aired. Many of our most gifted writers, performers and technicians are consequently forced to find work abroad where they cannot but end up by reflecting the realities and perspectives of another country. Under these circumstances it becomes extremely difficult for very large numbers of Canadians to know the highly textured and varied character of their own land and to allow their imaginations to roam at home rather than abroad. This makes it hard not only to recognize one's own national interest but also to pursue it. American popular culture, and particularly television, are thus 252

ESCAPING EXTINCTION an immense Trojan horse enabling foreign concerns and priorities to infiltrate our very minds and beings. Lest that martial metaphor of the Trojan horse give rise to a misunderstanding, I hasten to add that the nationalist, pro-Canadian stance espoused here in no way reflects an anti-American sentiment . Although the overall quality of American television may not fully satisfy, many of its programs are good. In any event, Canadians should not be deprived of the opportunity of watching whatever they please from abroad so long as a reasonable chance is provided for their own shows to be available . This is the problem: given the potent forces favouring the foreign product and the latter's plentiful supply, what can be done to create conditions in which Canadians can make genuine choices between foreign and domestic offerings? When only four per cent of drama available is Canadian, such a choice does simply not exist. Canadian policy planners laboured hard and long in an effort to find a solution to the dilemma . No less than six Royal Commissions and special committees of inquiry, as well as seemingly endless Parliamentary probings, have struggled with the problem, and we are still without a sure-fire remedy. The issue has both domestic and international dimensions . Students of international affairs now draw important distinctions between the field of international relations, which focuses on the interaction between states speaking through their governments, and transnational relations, which deal with all manner of individual, corporate, and other contacts across boundaries. Our broadcasting conundrum has both transnational and international aspects, as well as purely domestic elements. To examine it is, in fact, a nearly perfect means of exploring the perspectives the two countries adopt towards each other, since it touches on virtually every facet of their political, social, economic and cultural characteristics and how these affect the relations between them. Canadian broadcasting policy is, in other words, and contrary to what one might at first surmise, a singularly suitable and apposite subject to be tackled in a series of lectures on Canada's Perspective on the U.S.A. The centrepiece of Canada's broadcast policy has always been an Act of Parliament . The most recent version, that of 1968, as amended several times since, contains a description of what the Canadian broadcasting system should be. It states unequivocally that radio frequencies are public property and hence implies that they should be used in a manner promoting the public interest. The Act nevertheless recognizes that Canadian broadcasting undertakings constitute one system, comprised of both public and private elements. This system, it is asserted, should be owned and controlled by Canadians "so as to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, 25 3

JOHN MEISEL social and economic fabric of Canada ." Another clause specifies that programming should use predominantly Canadian creative and other resources . The Act also provides for two of the major actors on the broadcasting scene: a nationally owned broadcasting corporation (the CBC) and "a single independent public authority" (the CRTC) which is to regulate and supervise the system according to the objectives enunciated in the Act . Underlying these and many other provisions is the assumption that broadcasting should not respond merely to the dictates of the market but that it should serve certain national interests, some of them related to the strengthening of a sense of Canadian nationality and identity. This concern with community goals rather than the profit motive (substantially at variance with the American pattern) is also reflected in the Act's specifying that when a conflict emerges between the private and public elements, it shall be resolved in the public interest "but paramount consideration shall be given to the objectives of the national broadcasting service." The Act thus essentially accomplished three things : it set the goals of the Canadian broadcasting system (in greater detail than is suggested by my summary) ; it provided the objectives and mandate of the CBC ; and it created a powerful regulatory agency independent of the government of the day . Although the relative position of the CBC had been declining in English television since the creation of the private networks, the Act reaffirmed its primary role in the system . It also charged it with special responsibilities in providing "for a continuing expression of Canadian identity." And it has certainly been the CBC which has played a key role in providing such Canadian drama as has been available . The private broadcasters for the most part tended to focus on producing news, public affairs, and sports broadcasts and some inexpensive light entertainment . In so far as TV drama is concerned, they have relied virtually exclusively on the purchase of popular American shows, a programming policy which, to a lesser extent, even the CBC itself has had to emulate . The reasons for the CBC's recourse to American drama and such programs as Hockey Night in Canada are instructive. As I have already noted, one way which Canadian broadcasters have used to attract audiences is to present'popular American shows . Thus, for instance, Dallas is brought to us by our very own public corporation . Furthermore, only part of the CBC's income is derived from government subsidies . It must cover some of its expenses from advertising revenue . This is said to have several advantages : it is an inescapable necessity in so far as the CBC's affiliates are concerned . These private stations which operate in places where the public broadcaster does not own an outlet depend for their survival on the sale of commercials . Secondly, advertising provides useful information and thus is seen by many business people and consumers as an essential service . Finally, income 254

ESCAPING EXTINCTION derived from sources other than parliamentary votes is considered to be some protection against possible political interference. There is, of course, also a down side. Advertising sometimes distressingly interrupts dramatic lines in a story and thus destroys its artistic effect. Many of the potentially most loyal CBC viewers were disgusted by the Corporation's use of commercials during the showing of The Jewel in the Crown and forsook the CBC for PBS which had scheduled the series for a later showing without interruptions . The commitment to present the lucrative sports events all too frequently compels the postponement of the National and the Journal and thus appears to interfere with what some perceive to be a main part of the CBC's mandate . Some also argue that the advertising revenue adds little to the network's independence . From the perspective of this essay, the most intriguing aspect of the CBC's and the private broadcasters' reliance on U.S. programming is that American cultural products are, in an important way, paradoxically used to diminish the U.S.A.'s cultural influence . Viewers display considerable loyalty to the station to which they are tuned. It is therefore argued that audiences attracted to Canadian stations by U.S. programs will continue being tuned to Canadian news, sports, and other programs which are offered by the CBC because of its policies, and by many private broadcasters because of the need to live up to the CRTC's Canadian content regulations . The CBC has another excellent reason for purveying foreign shows, sports, and all manner of other programs. The Broadcasting Act enjoins it to provide "a balanced service of information, enlightenment and entertainment for people of different ages, interests and tastes covering the whole range of programming in fair proportion ." This immensely broad mandate makes it imperative that the service cover a bewildering array of productions. When it is remembered that it must do this in both of our official languages, that it operates four superb radio networks, a northern service and international shortwave agency, and that it reports Parliamentary debates via satellite, it becomes apparent that the CBC is among the world's largest and most active broadcasters . Although like all big and aging structures the CBC has organizational problems and confronts formidable internal challenges, it has made and continues to make key contributions to the broadcasting and cultural scene in this country . This is evident at two levels : the quality of its programs is, for the most part, extremely high and its increasingly successful efforts are making Canadian programming available during the prime viewing hours. Compared to the record of the private broadcasters, its performance in this area is phenomenal. In addition, the program sales arm of the company, CBC Enterprises, is having increasing success in selling Canadian productions abroad, including 255

JOHN MEISEL in the U.S.A . The latter is particularly encouraging . American audiences, no doubt because of the timid and unventuresome habits of the commercial networks, have amazingly parochial tastes . Except for PBS fans, who comprise only a very. small proportion of the U.S. viewing public, Americans are not attracted to foreign shows . It is well known that some Canadian films and TV plays have had to have their Canadian features, such as place and street names or the presence of Canadian banknotes, Americanized before they became acceptable to U.S . buyers . The fact that such programs as As It Happens, on radio, and Seeing Things, The Wayne and Shuster Show, Empire, Inc ., as well as other CBC productions on television are being heard or viewed abroad indicates that the CBC may be able to benefit from the growing world television market. Still, realistically, one must recognize that the successes so far have been modest and that the costs of major Canadian drama productions are not likely to be recouped through exports . We shall have to continue to a very great extent finding domestic means of paying for our own television production . If Parliament intended the CBC to be the principal player in our broadcasting bands, then the CRTC was to be the principal conductor . It has, as the Act suggests, licensed broadcast undertakings and has supervised the overall system in an effort to ensure that the goals enunciated by Parliament are realized . Judgement of how successful it has been is by no means unanimous . Some see the regulatory agency as an overbearing ogre imposing elite tastes and unrealistic demands on a potentially enterprising but shackled industry. Others consider it to be a supine slave of the private broadcasters . On balance, it is probably fair to say that it has fought pretty tenaciously for Parliament's goal of a predominantly Canadian broadcasting system but that its efforts have often been blunted by some fundamental characteristics of the Canadian environment . It has not been aggressive in ensuring the primacy of the CBC within the system and it has been rather lenient with respect to the Canadian content goals. Because of the staggering difficulty of defining the key terms, it has also largely avoided implementing the Act's injunction that "the programming provided by each broadcaster should be of high standard ." Still, its impact on what is available on the air has been very considerable and salutary. The insistence, in the 'seventies, that thirty per cent of the music played on AM radio be Canadian, fiercely attacked by the broadcasters, created a Canadian record industry and poses no serious problems to the licensees . The benefits to Canadian musicians, and hence to their audiences, has been enormous . Although Canadian content regulations on television are less successful, they have nevertheless made a considerable difference to the availability of Canadian programs on our stations, particularly private ones. In essence 256

ESCAPING EXTINCTION each broadcaster must, on the average, present Canadian programming during 60 per cent of the daily schedule and during at least half of the evening hours. The CBC is governed by more stringent requirements but has for some time exceeded these by a fairly wide margin. One result of the regulations has been that high quality news, public affairs, and sports are widely available on all Canadian stations . Variety, light entertainment, and drama, on the other hand - categories which are expensive to produce have been woefully neglected by the private sector . With only rare exceptions, domestic children's shows have also been overlooked . To meet the Canadian content quotas, many stations have also resorted to inexpensive quizz-shows and similar "fillers," usually exhibited at low viewing times. This kind of programming and the allocation of inadequate resources to the rare production of Canadian drama have contributed to the low esteem enjoyed, by and large, by Canadian programs. Despite the indifferent reputation of domestic production in the minds of many, when good quality shows or mini-series are available, they attract very significant audiences . It is probably no exaggeration to say that the most powerful factor in the back of the CRTC's mind has been the need to protect the Canadian element in our broadcasting system . The presence of the U.S. is therefore of major importance in the evolution of Canadian broadcasting policy. Examples abound but I shall mention only two. Knowing full well that Canadian broadcasters, particularly in the private domain, cannot produce Canadian programs unless their revenues are ensured, the Commission has defended the economic viability of its licensees whenever this was compatible with the terms of the Broadcasting Act. Thus rules were developed forcing cable systems to provide simultaneous program substitution when a U.S. and Canadian station carry the same show at the same time. Accordingly, a subscriber watching a program on an American station which is available at the same time on a Canadian channel would see the same material, including the ads, as one tuned to the Canadian source of that program . The purpose is, of course, to protect the advertising revenue of the Canadian broadcaster . The other reason for the never absent awareness of the "U.S. factor" in Canadian broadcasting on the part of the Commission is that a majority of Canadians can, as we have noted, receive U.S. signals "off air," that is, without cable, and that to prevent Canadian cable systems from carrying U.S. stations is impossible in the current climate of opinion . Thus too stringent Canadian content regulations and other prescriptions giving our programming a distinctive flavour and quality could easily drive audiences into the arms of the American networks and out of reach of Canadian broadcasters and of the CRTC altogether. Thus the limits of what we can do in this country are set not only by ourselves but also in a very real sense

JOHN MEISEL by our neighbours . And when I say this, I mean not only the U.S. government but also private companies and individuals . So far, in our survey of what has been done to give Canadians a choice between watching U.S. and indigenous television, we have caught a glimpse of the Broadcasting Act and its pivotal creatures : the CBC, private broadcasters, and the CRTC. But other instruments are required, farther removed from the Parliamentary umbrella . The most remote, in this sense, is educational television . Under conditions laid down by the CRTC in response to a cabinet directive, educational television services were established in several provinces by agencies legally at an arm's length distance from the provincial government. Some of these, like the Knowledge Network in B.C., are devoted exclusively to instructional purposes but others, notably TV Ontario and Radio Quebec, have defined their mandate very broadly. In some of their activities these networks resemble PBS and they certainly cater in part to adult audiences . Although they carry a good deal of foreign programming, their schedules also provide considerable Canadian content . Substantially different from the commercial networks, they furnish viewing opportunities which are not otherwise available . Their children's services are excellent, but they do not add materially to the availability of Canadian dramatic shows for adults . As we have seen, the Broadcasting Act focuses on the CBC, the private sector, and the CRTC as the chosen instruments for the realization of a successful policy . But the intractable nature of the problems, particularly in the light of technological innovation, has made it imperative that other agencies and measures come to the rescue . Some have been on the scene for a while, but others have emerged only as the result of growing difficulties. Among the former, the National Film Board is a well-known and widely acclaimed producer of fine Canadian programs . For reasons which must be related to internecine rivalries, NFB programs have not been shown as frequently on Canadian television as they have, in recent years, on PBS . Neither the private broadcasters nor the CBC have utilized the rich storehouse of Film Board footage to the extent possible, although at least one Quebec cable system does make effective use of it and the CBC has done much better than the private networks . Co-productions between the CBC and the NFB have become increasingly common lately and have resulted in some first-rate programs. Beyond this, the federal government has developed a number of initiatives designed to strengthen Canadian program production and the general health of the television industry. Three deserve our special attention: the negotiation of international agreements facilitating co-productions between Canadian and foreign companies, the Canadian Broadcast Program Development Fund, and the famous (or infamous, depending on which side

ESCAPING EXTINCTION of the border you stand) Bill C 58. The first of these can be dispatched quickly . Ottawa has actively sought to enter into agreements with a number of governments under the aegis of which Canadian and foreign partners would be able to benefit, in their production of films and television programs, from joint investments, sharing larger markets, access to their respective television outlets under preferred conditions, and from otherwise reinforcing one another's efforts to maintain a healthy domestic production industry. While many of the signatories are francophone countries, the scheme is by no means confined to them. The U .S .A. is, for obvious reasons, not included, and neither is Britain. In the latter case union agreement makes such accords unacceptable. The Canadian Broadcast Production Development Fund was announced by the Minister of Communications, Francis Fox, when he launched his new broadcast policy in 1983 . Its goal was to provide fairly substantial sums of money annually to private production companies and independent producers for assistance in the creation of drama, children's and variety programs. A pump-priming feature required that for every dollar provided by the fund, the producer must raise at least two dollars elsewhere. Thirty-five million dollars were provided at the start, but the sum was to rise to sixty million by the fifth year. By that time, therefore, the fund was expected to inject $180 million for the production of programs in neglected categories . Half of the monies available each year were to be allocated to productions intended for exhibition by private broadcasters and the other half by the CBC. The fund was to be administered by Telefilm Canada, the new name given to the Canadian Film Development Corporation . It was also announced that the cost of the project to the government was to be raised from the imposition of a six per cent tax on Canadian cable companies . Since the latter pay no royalties for the programs they deliver to their subscribers, this was deemed to be a fair arrangement, inducing the profitable cable industry to contribute to Canadian production . Canadians were to be given the opportunity to see indigenous programs meeting certain requirements by means of a redistributive arrangement drawing on funds collected from companies who derive their income to a large extent from distributing the services of the American networks . This ingenious scheme got off to a good start and led to the commissioning of some promising Canadian programs . The CBC made ample use of the opportunity from the start; it committed about $23 million by commissioning new programs from independent producers . The private broadcasters, however, whose record in the production of Canadian drama, variety, and children's programming had for so long been generally shameful, still showed less interest, even with the new incentives, and put up only ten million . The program is now in a state of crisis because the CBC budget cuts 259

JOHN MEISEL announced by Marcel Masse, the new Minister of Communications, prevent the Corporation from making further use of the fund in the immediate future . The government is in the process of trying to revise the terms of the program so as to rescue it from oblivion. By far the most controversial initiative of the federal government in support of Canadian cultural development, including broadcasting, was Bill C 58. This piece of. legislation received extensive publicity largely because of its impact on the Canadian editions of Reader's Digest and Time. President Eisenhower personally intervened against the measure. The conversion of Maclean's into a weekly would not have been possible without it. But the Bill's most far-reaching impact on Canadian-American relations results from its effect on a small number of American television stations situated near the border . Introduced in 1975, C 58 sought to stop or reduce the hemorrhaging of Canadian advertising funds from Canada into the United States . Broadcasters to be protected were, for the most part, in the Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal areas . American stations just across the border allegedly deprived the Canadian broadcasters of substantial revenue by accepting and even aggressively soliciting Canadian advertising beamed at Canadian viewers . Some stations were apparently established for the primary purpose of milking the Canadian market. The legislation, actually an amendment to the Income Tax Act, intended to put an end to all this by no longer accepting the cost of TV commercials placed by Canadian advertisers on American stations as a tax-deductible business expense. It has been estimated that Canadians spent about $21 .5 million on U.S. TV advertising in 1975 . This represented roughly ten percent of all Canadian television advertising . As the result of the legislation, the revenue of American border broadcasters dropped to $6.5 million by 1978. The American reaction could not have been fiercer . It is no exaggeration to say that the border broadcast dispute, which still continues, has been the most threatening irritant in Canadian-American relations . It also illumines some significant differences between the two countries which we shall examine in a moment. The affected U.S . broadcasters lobbied as best they could to have the legislation rescinded but without success . Since then, major figures have become involved on both sides of the border . Henry Kissinger raised the matter with Alan MacEachen, then Secretary of State for External Affairs . Congress retaliated by passing legislation which severely restricted income tax deductions allowed Americans who attended conventions in Canada . The revenge apparently cost Canada hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tourist income . This measure was ultimately annulled, but matters did not stop there . It was proposed that punitive changes should be made to the U.S.-Canadian 260

ESCAPING EXTINCTION automotive agreement if C 58 was not rescinded . Legislation was introduced in Congress by Senator Goldwater intended to prohibit foreign ownership of cable if no reciprocal rights are granted - a provision which would have hit several large Canadian companies with cable franchises in the U.S. President Carter and Reagan both urged Congress to pass legislation which would mirror Bill C 58 . The most serious attempted retaliation was contained in an amendment to the 1982 Senate mirror bill which would deny U.S. business tax deductions for the purchase of Telidon, Canada's videotext system . A successful move in this direction would seriously harm the future of Canada's high-tech industry, which is expected to play a pivotal role in the country's economy in the emerging information society. Why has this dispute assumed such a virulent character? After all, a loss of some fifteen million dollars annually in revenue is trifling between countries whose trade exceeds seventy billion a year. As sometimes happens in the relations between states and neighbours, the controversy, though quite insignificant in many ways, encapsulates some extraordinarily sensitive issues which arise from fundamental assumptions and values central to both societies . It also reveals how political structures sometimes create problems as well as solving them. The Canadian position grew out of a few central assumptions : Canadian cultural life was being threatened by the massive advantages which American cultural products derived from the huge scale of the American market. Measures needed to be devised to create an environment in which Canadian creativity could flourish and which would provide Canadians with their own cultural goods . With respect to broadcasting, it was assumed that programming must be predominantly Canadian and for this to happen adequate resources must be available. A serious drain in such resources, particularly in the major markets, weakens the economic viability of the licensees and therefore their ability to live up to their commitments, particularly with respect to Canadian content . Something had to be done to protect them. Tax policy was seen as an acceptable means for achieving these ends. Although economic measures were being used to promote national goals, the purposes of the enterprise, in so far as the government of Canada was concerned, were cultural and were related to the very preservation of a distinct Canadian identity. It was of course also the case that Canadian broadcasters affected by the new measures would derive economic benefits from them. Two major concerns animated the violent American reaction . The border broadcasters were outraged by what they saw as the unfairness of the Canadian action and they, and less immediately involved Americans, objected on the grounds that Canada was interfering with freedom of

JOHN MEISEL information and with the salutary and efficient operation of the free market. Canada's broadcasting system, so it was argued, benefited in no small measure from the free availability of American network programs . The Canadian cable industry, in particular, sold subscriptions to the American channels without paying any compensation, and its rapid and vast growth rested on its ability to deliver these highly popular offerings . Canadian practices of commercial or signal substitution were seen as contributing to piracy. The ability to benefit from selling time to Canadian advertisers on the same footing as Canadian stations was therefore considered a fair compensation for a contribution made to Canada by the American stations. It was further affirmed that the benefits of the Canadian tax provisions would not achieve their intended goal: Canadians would continue watching the American stations and there was no assurance that the advertising revenue accruing to the Canadian companies would find its way into greater Canadian content. This train of thought was echoed in 1981 by Ted Rogers, one of Canada's leading cablecasters : ".. . there has never been a public accounting by the privileged few companies," he asserted, "who financially benefited from this ... legislation . There should be such a public accounting. ... If the cash flow gains to these relatively few private companies is not going to produce enhanced Canadian programming - then the bill should be repealed ." (cited by Arries, 147) It is doubtful whether the cause of the border broadcasters would have received so much support in the United States, and for so long, had there not been a matter of deep-seated principle involved . A very large number of Americans, inspired in part by the First Amendment, has a passionate and absolute commitment to the free flow of information. No matter that this ideological position often miraculously coincides with crass self-serving economic interests and that, domestically, it is occasionally compromised by the mundane claims of competing interests, the free speech rhetoric arouses ardent and genuine support among most Americans . To interfere with the transfer of information (whether it be related to gun chewing, gumshoeing, or the Gettysberg address is of no consequence) as directed by the whims of the market, is to impose authoritarian and reprehensible restraints inimical to human freedom . It is this deeply ingrained terror of interference with freedom of speech which has led to the tragic misreading of the MacBride Report and of the New World Information Order and the related U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO, and which has also given the border broadcasters ideological support . There were other aspects of course. Senator Moynaham, in explaining his "strengthening amendment" linking the mirror legislation to the sales of Telidon, noted that "the Canadians have made the issue a major test of our 262

ESCAPING EXTINCTION will to protect U.S . service industries faced by unreasonable and unfair discrimination by a U.S. trading partner . . .. The border broadcast issue is indeed a test of our trade laws." (H and J, 54) So the problem is not seen merely as one of abstract principle but also as one possibly setting a precedent with respect to international trade and even property rights . But whatever the instrumental and egotistical motives for retaliation, and whatever the desire of certain politicians to cater to the interests of their constituents, the ideological drive and concern is not only genuine but also paramount . What lessons can Canadians derive from this ongoing battle other than that, when the undefended border is concerned, a snowflake into an avalanche may grow? The first is that despite many similarities and affinities, profound disparities exist between our two countries . In so far as these relate to broadcasting, they have been admirably summarized by Theodore Hagelin and Hudson Janisch, on whose study of Bill C 58 I have drawn heavily in the foregoing discussion. Canadian and U.S. domestic communications policies, they say, differ both in their ends and their means. Canadian policy seeks cultural development ; U.S. policy seeks consumer choice. Canadian policy relies on program content regulation and a strong public broadcasting system to achieve its objectives. U.S. policy relies on structural, or industrial, regulation and a strong commercial broadcasting system to achieve its objectives . (H and J, 56) A major consequence of these differences is that when disagreements occur between the two countries, which is inevitable, both deep-seated ideological and mundane egotistical forces are likely to come into play. And, as the history of religious wars has so painfully taught us, disputes in which self-interest is bolstered by articles of faith are devilishly hard to resolve . Secondly, Americans, though in many ways among the most generous people in the world, can also be inordinately tough bargainers. In international relations and transnational dealings they nearly always play hardball and rarely give 2 .54 centimeters . Thirdly, because of the size of the country, its power and outlook, Americans are not always well-informed about prevailing conditions and the philosophical preoccupations existing among others . Even the most enlightened find it hard to understand Canada's cultural nationalism. They cannot see why we would not wish to embrace joyously all manifestations of American civilization and why anyone should be afraid of it or why it should pose any dangers . After all, it is benign, unassuming, and universally valid.

JOHN MEISEL This lack of understanding is exacerbated at the official level by the complex and fragmented nature of the U .S. governmental structure . The Constitution's imposition of the separation of powers has something to do with the highly differentiated character of Washington's organizations, but there are other reasons . The following bodies are involved in formulating international broadcasting policy: several "desks" in the State Department, the FCC, the National Telecommunications and Information Agency, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, various committees of each House of Congress, and a special Co-ordinator with ambassadorial rank attached to the State Department. The proliferation of agencies leads to specialization which may prevent the adoption of a holistic view on policy matters . It is, for instance, highly likely that the perception of Bill C 58 by officials involved in trade policy will completely ignore the cultural dimension of the legislation and so fail to see its purpose and the importance attached to it by the Canadian government. Finally, the absence of cabinet government bestows awesome powers on Congress . Since party discipline there is relatively weak, it is not at all uncommon for various regional interests to cohere on policy packages serving specific local groups . Logrolling is rife, and the wishes of fairly small groups like those of the border broadcasters, for example, can be combined with others for the sake of forcing relatively unimportant or even unwanted policies on the nation. There is some evidence that not all the retaliatory notions against Canada introduced in the legislature had the support of the U.S. administration and that the latter does not favour the practice of linking one particular international issue to others which may be quite unrelated to it. The insights obtained by our examination of the U.S. position on the border broadcasting dispute are instructive with respect to the theme of this essay - how to avoid cultural extinction in the face of the bubbling American presence next to and inside us. Although the problem is in a sense truly international or at least in the domain of transborder relations, its solutions are essentially domestic. No amount of pressure on Washington or even on American industry is going to sensibly diminish the inexorable American cultural influence. We need to review our attitudes to our country and its cultural traditions and opportunities . The quality of our cultural production must be enhanced so as to enable it to hold its own . This has implications for the educational system and for the organization of our economy . A review of broadcasting policy is in order in the light of current conditions. It appears that the government is gearing up to another (the fourth) attempt to produce a new Communications Act. Some of the matters touched upon in my lecture must be borne in mind while this process takes place.

ESCAPING EXTINCTION Public broadcasting needs to be strengthened rather than weakened, and its appropriate place and form reaffirmed. Likewise, the regulatory process awaits streamlining and adjustment to guide us effectively into the next century. Other governmental measures cry out for examination, as does a searching look at what must be done by the private sector if we are to maintain our national identity. As in so many other areas, the prime ingredient in the escape from extinction is to recognize the problem realistically and then to have the will to act upon it. Ironically, whether we have these qualities, whether we can muster the force needed to defend ourselves effectively, depends in no small measure on the extent to which we have already become Americanized . If we trust the market to pull us through, if we fail to pursue the public interest through both public and private means, then, I fear, we are lost. Political Studies Queen's University

*This paper was first delivered as a public lecture on March G, 1985 at the University of Western Ontario under the auspices of its Centre for American Studies.

References 1 . Juneau, Pierre, "Public Broadcasting in the New Technological Environment: A Canadian View", Luxembourg, July 16, 1983 . 2. Peers, Frank W., "Canada & the United States : Comparative Approaches to Broadcast Policy, Canadian U.S. Conference on Communication Policy", Canadian U.S. Conference on Communication Policy, Cultures in Collision, Praeger: N.Y., 1984 . 3. Ibid., Arries, Leslie R., p. 147. 4. Ibid., Hagelin, Theodore & Janisch, Hudson, "The Border Broadcast Dispute in Context" .

Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory/Revue canadienne de theorie politiyue et sociale, Volume X. N. 1-2 (1986) .

ELDER: ARTAUD AFTER TELSAT

Loretta Czernis
Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible . In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds .' Antonin Artaud The one thing that is certain is a hidden violence that makes all things uncertain .z Bruce Elder Lamentations,* Bruce Elder's new eight and one half hour film, was designed to perform a kind of epistemological surgery, so that, upon leaving the screening, we are changed in some way strangely familiar. Elder operates, through his film, upon the arrogance underlying our "new and improved" discourse . Our conceit emerges from how much we know as "proven" by how many efficient inventions we have produced, and that these intellectual and manual productions have catapulted us into postmodernity. Lamentations removes obstructions so that we can consider that which is still largely unknown to us: how we managed to disconnect from history. This film makes us experience our self-confidence as a pathetic cultural narcissism . The laments act as purging insights capable of luring spectators away from an isolated estrangement toward a communal one ; we become active participants in (re)creating collective memory.
*Lamentations: A Monument For A Dead World Part One: The Dream of the Last Historian Part Two: The Sublime Calculation

266

ELDER'S LAMENT Artaud believed that theatrical violence could cleanse the human soul. He sought out historical situations of tragedy, believing that it was only in times of tremendous suffering that people could understand reality . In the midst of catastrophe the beauty and the horror of life are as one. A vision, given birth in crisis, can transform us. Artaud wished to recreate such experience in the theatre, searching for the necessary magic in a total spectacle, with actors who knew how to scream, so that we might remember something of the passion and cruelty of Nature/Culture . Artaud wanted theatre to do the same job that narrative painting had done for centuries - teach morality. But he lived during a time when people still went to the theatre to be enriched - before TV, before computer games, before laser lightshows. Anyone now wishing to teach must bring the message to the people in a spectacle which can both caress and jolt our digital sensibilities . In classical theology, natural and moral evil have always been distinct, the former being the reasoned study of why God would allow natural disasters to occur in Nature, the latter being attempts to understand the origins and nature of evil within human will. Elder renders this distinction arbitrary, reminding us that we think we "own" Nature, when, in fact, we have been allowed co-presence with it. The proof for our folly lies in the ways in which we have imposed names on the forces of Nature, in an effort to dominate and control it. One such name is natural evil. Nature is violent, teeming with deadly plants and animals, floods, earthquakes, and many other elements which humankind takes up as threatening to survival . We have imposed our word for our own fall from grace, "evil", on the earth itself, upon which we depend for our survival. We are all implicated in this treason, this abandonment of our Home. In betraying Nature we betray ourselves . Baudrillard has discerned that "Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible."3 In his view there is "... only "information", secret virulence, chain reaction, slow implosion and similacra of spaces where the real-effect again comes into play."' At museums people feel a brush with history. This is achieved by skillful exhibition of collected objects . The cases, the lighting, the prose on the little catalogue cards must be exactly right in order to create the theatrical effect we have come to know as "historical". Sometimes they even play music to fabricate a total environment . This is not different from entering a funeral parlour, where every object arranged for viewing is neatly masked and out of easy reach.' Such lamentable cultural artefacts exhibit a bizarre dualism which emerges, Elder would say, out of a hatred of time . The most insidious illusion is that we can capture what has died and keep it present to us. This folly exhibits our hatred for mortality. We love production; we hate corruption. History books, documentaries and historical sites are tourist attractions . Every attempt to build a City of God has become a Coney Island . For every "real" cathedral and totem pole there are thousands of plastic replicas. 26 7

LORETTA CZERNIS
Indian dolls and bishop dolls switch costumes daily in the bedrooms of little girls everywhere. Punjabi children go to village halls to watch Dallas and National Geographic specials on bears and Hopi indians . TV via Telsat satellite is educating them to read life in the west. Neither the educational show nor the prime time soap opera tell them anything about what life is "really" like in North America . What constitutes understanding now? Information-gathering, not knowledge-seeking, not wisdom-listening. In order to cope in the information society, it is essential to believe in the reproductions . Historical writing is static description including insular analyses of geographically conditioned "events" . When events take precedence over Things, when we forget Being which language represents, we are expelled from history. Forgetting what is always there in the background, we are forced to leave the Garden, because we have failed to be attentive, to care. Outside of the Garden is disconnectedness, despair, hatred, madness ; not the passionate madness of creation but the cool madness of rationally planned destruction . We have severed the connection to Home and in so doing we have also alienated and, as Elder shows us with dizzying imagery, driven Nature mad . "A heartless Nature has opened her great maw and swallowed everything ." Bruce Elder is a diary-keeper who understands another way of doing ."a history. "We must resist the folly of historical writing There is no history to be remembered beyond my own, for my life is a fruit from the family tree of mankind . To try to plot what happened between people hundreds of years ago is an impossible project, and reads awkwardly, like a bad play. We can only read ourselves in history. In (re)writing myself I write about the meaning-world . Elder's diary is about me; mine is about him, and you. We are connected, not isolated. As he states, the last historian is everyone . This Film Is About You, Not About Its Maker (at best, a half-truth) Elder has made Lamentations a performance in which the audience must attend to many spectacles all at once. We watch a travelogue. We watch the filmmaker himself reading poetry and filming his friends talking, talking, talking about everything from physical disorders to ladies' perfume to geometry, some wearing costumes, yet always still "themselves". We see ruins from many cultures . We observe sexual relations . There is a narrative on one thing, subtitles relating other things, music, superimposition, rapid montage : reproduction upon reproduction . I began to no longer watch, but to be affected . For a time the scenes changed so fast I couldn't recognize anything. The swaying movement of the images became severe. I was overwhelmed by the intensity of Elder's vision. I found myself in the midst 268

ELDER'S LAMENT of an experience for which ... I don't have adequate words . His explosive grammar shattered my assumptions about how to watch a film. A direct communication will be re-established between the spectator and the spectacle, between the actor and the spectacle, from the fact that the spectator, placed in the middle of the action, is engulfed and physically affected by it. 1 Our consciousness contains the memories of how European civilization arrived in North America and Mexico, where it was not needed. Something of that which has died among we who seem to still live must be recorded before Bruce, before each of us, forgets, by recreating the remains of memory. Like all great artists, it is obvious from this film that Elder has had the experience of a very direct, blood-curdling communication with Nature. Accompanying this he has made some contact with his ancestors - our ancestors - who shared a tremendous respect for the earth which is alien to our present everyday understanding . He has travelled to cathedrals, petroglyph sites, hopi and mayan ruins, looking for signs - for points of contact - with the primordial . In these traces he senses how the Holy was once with us, that we once attended to the co-presence of Being and Things. The traces come from his remembering, sparked in surroundings which he realizes nevertheless to be modern productions of what was "ancient" . "The record of the events that occurred in these sacred places is written in earth and stone."" The problem is to make space speak, to feed and furnish it; like mines laid in a rock which all of a sudden turns into geysers and bouquets of stone." Watching this film was for me at times like jumping into a pool full of prisms . I saw myself from many different angles, distorted in the "open field of possibilities," one moment listening to an actor as the aging Liszt play bittersweet melodies, and at other times being bombarded with cinematic images of people shooting up, getting shot, and electroshocked. This juxtaposition of the sublime and the sleazy does some justice to the complexities of human passions, which should not be seen as linear, but circulatory. Elder reminds us that language creates meaning, hence reality for the mind. We are also (re)told that words are the symbols for the Things they represent . Speech is both rearticulations and symbols . We have forgotten the symbolic. We censor ; we focus on the redundant . In so doing, we negate our own creative potential, for uniqueness arises out of tropes, of taking the courage to see beyond language-as-sign. All else is mimesis .' 3 One of the metaphors Elder elaborates is that of a map . There are scenes 269

LORETTA CZERNIS
of a couple in foreplay, exploring each other's crevices and plains, peaks and caves. The Elder geneological charts enter our field of vision again and again . So does an actor sitting behind a desk playing a psychiatrist, who speaks into his microphone about a patient he despises . The skit maps the violence ofclinical discourse, which in the end traps even the analyst himself in its web. There are maps indicating where certain poisonous spiders live. There are photos of faces, whose deformities and disintegrations plot the indifference of the insect world. A map is filmed which points up the regions around the globe where plague has occurred. The rigourous clarity in the presentation of these images leads me to conclude that Elder wanted to disorient comfortable viewers, to make us leave abstract versus concrete behind, to perform what Artaud could have called a theatrical-alchemical operation for making spiritual gold. The process of purification is also one of purgation. An actor in a dingy alleyway relates aphorisms on pus, intestines, blood, sweat, vomit. We see a vulture eating carrion . These unpredictably recurring images provoke physical reactions . We who are civilized spectators are (re)introduced into our bodies. We are usually only on our bodies . We wear our clean skin and fit limbs like a costume. In everyday life we are not "in" our bodies, with our mucous, our bacteria, our sweat, our excrement. This is the stuff of us. All civilizations censor, since reasoning implies censoring. Making distinctions is how we carve out a territory, take a position . "Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart" ." Delineating boundaries makes religious belief, village life, sexuality, etc. into objects of thought to be defended. We have created many efficient systems as a result of setting up distinctions, which then very quickly turn into oppositions : white-red, Christian-heathen, reason-nature, perfection-corruption, rigidity-fallibility, male-female, yes-no, 0-1 . Digital technology is logically a form of ethnocentrism. This obsession with positioning is the basis of competition in our global economy. Our participation in these forces of production, as we well know by now, has alienated us, cut us off from seeing and developing praxis in our lives. This praxis is what we used to call faith (and before that it was what we called praxis) . It was the ability to enter situations as open terrain for social relations, for being-with, not as opportunities for combat . It was the ability to acknowledge the futility of separateness . ... your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his [sic] face from you so that he does not hear. '5 Elder has created a cinema of cruelty. In Lamentations, he addresses the "horrifying dualism" which created, then overwhelmed, civilization. This 27 0

ELDER'S LAMENT dualism (our love for making distinctions) though essential for intellectual development, is not necessary, Elder argues, for the development of consciousness as more than rational thought. His is not a blind lament, but rather a diary with a clear and searing message: this dualism is deadly because by focussing on reason without praxis we have forgotten how to care. In the anguished, catastrophic period we live in, we feel an urgent need for a theater which events do not exceed, whose resonance is deep within us, dominating the instability of the times . Our long habit of seeking diversion has made us forget the idea of a serious theatre, which, overturning all our preconceptions, inspires us with the fiery magnetism of its images and acts upon us like spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be forgotten. Everything that acts is a cruelty. It is upon this idea of extreme action, pushed beyond all limits, that theater must be rebuilt . 16 Perhaps the greatest violence Elder inflicts on the post-modern viewer is an invitation to the dance . The end of the film shows scenes of frenzied dancing by many South and North American Indian tribes, who Elder has brought together on film, to recreate the world. Tribal peoples have always believed in dance as a sacred force, generating the power to reverse existing orders . The gestures expose and open up thought-cages, cleansing consciousness so that we may begin anew. I call this a "violence" on Elder's part because he is wrenching us out from under our everyday documentary reality, into an old/new oral tradition, back/forward into praxis . To believe in such imagery requires of us all a great leap into waiting . The trance-dance image provides one strong metaphor for how to make this leap now. All we have to do (the hardest thing for a culture to do that has not privileged contemplation for centuries) is to listen to the ruminations of the soul. I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought : So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing ." Elder's celluloid way-station makes an important contribution in our desperate search for a suitable cultural praxis . This is ironic, since technology greatly assisted in our alienation . We automatically respond to reflected images like new friends/objects to be quickly scanned . Elder, however, has

LORETTA CZERNIS designed his film to move at points faster than any speedreader . Lamentations can scan the spectator . Both reader and . text reverse positions unpredictably, making for a visual outward bound of Nature's stochastos. The viewer is thus (re)taught meta-literacy - a way of reading with double vision for both sense and meaning . This kind of reading is only possible, however, to viewers if we allow ourselves to become vulnerable to an experience which confronts all of the senses with a very powerful dream. As was true of Artaud, Elder is not afraid to document what he sees to be generations of terror and grace. He has divined that the world is now dead, getting ready to begin again . Being slipped away the more we tried to grasp hold. Individuation and greed have anaesthetized us; fear and boredom keep us asleep . Lamentations jogs the memory, writing time as recollection and intuition . By seeing this poetic film diary, we inscribe ourselves not in a linearly truncated historical document, but in a crystal-like film environment, (re)creating many resonant shades of our experience simultaneously . For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. 18
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. A. Artaud, The Theatre andIts Double . Trans., M.C . Richards . NY : Evergreen/Grove Press, 1958 (fourteenth edition, no date), p. 99. All of the following quotations attributed to Elder are taken from commentary he has written appearing in a subtitle format throughout the film Lamentations. Toronto: Lightworks, 1985 .

J. Baudrillard, Simulations. Trans., P. Foss, P. Patton and P. Beitchman. NY : Semiotext(e), 1983, p. 38 . J. Baudrillard, Op. Cit., p. 54 . J . Baudrillard, Op. Cit., passim . "A people without history is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern of timeless moments." From T.S . Eliot, "Little Gidding," The Four Quartets. NY: Harvest/ Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, p. 58 . Elder quotes from the Four Quartets at various points in his film . Bruce Elder, Laruentations. Ibid. Ibid. A. Artaud, Op. Cit., p. 96 . Bruce Elder, Lamentations . A. Artaud, Op . Cit., p. 98 . "Man (sicl does not render efficacious grace efficacious, but he can render sufficient grace sterile

7. 8. 9. 10 . 11 . 12 . 13 .

ELDER'S LAMENT
or undeveloped into efficacious grace." From J. Maritain, St . Thomas and the Problem of Evil. Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1942, p. 38 . 14. 15 . 16 . 17 . 18 . Sengstan, Hrin Hsin Ming . Trans., R.B . Clarke . Virginia : Universal, nd . Isaiah, 59 :1-2, Common Bible Rsv. A. Artaud, Op . Cit., pp . 84-5 . T.S. Eliot, "East Coker," Op . Cit., p. 28 . Isaiah, 65 :17; 30 :8, CB RSV.

INDEX VOLUME IX
Articles
Aronowitz, Stanley and Giroux, Henry Radical Education and Transformative Intellectual, No. 3, 48 . Finn, Geraldine Patriarchy and Pleasure: The Pornographic Eye/I, Nos. l-2, 81 . Godard, Barbara Redrawing the Circle : Power, Poetics, Language, Nos. 1-2, 165. Hughes, Patricia Pornography: Alternatives to Censorship, Nos . l-2, p. 96 . Jhally, Sut, Kline, Stephen and Leiss, William Magic in the Marketplace: An Empirical Test for Commodity Fetishism, No . 3, 1 . Kroker, Arthur Television and the Triumph of Culture : 3 Theses, No . 3, 37. Manion, Eileen We Objects Object : Pornography and the Woman's Movement, Nos. 1-2, 65 . Maroney, Heather Jon Embracing Motherhood : New Feminist Theory, Nos. 1-2, 40. McCallum, Pamela New Feminist Readings : Woman as Ecriture or Woman as Other? Nos. 1-2, 127. Miles, Angela Feminist Radicalism in the 1980's, Nos. 1-2, 16. Moi, Toril Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Nos. l-2, 133. Portis, Larry The Cultural Dialectic of the Blues, No . 3, 123. Rosen, Stanley Post-Modernism and the End of Philosophy, No . 3, 90. Schweikart, Patrocinio "What Are We Doing, Really? Feminist Criticism and the Problem of Theory", Nos. 1-2, 148. Wiser, James Modernity and Political Community, No. 3, 102.

Book Reviews
Aronowitz, Stanley Technology and Culture, Technology and the Canadian Mind by Arthur Kroker, No. 3, 126. Elliot, Patricia From Marx to Mothers, Marxism and Domination: A New-Hegelian Feminist Psychoanalytic Theory of Sexual, Political and Technological Liberation by Issac Balbus, Nos. 1-2, 148. Katz, Wendy 10 Years Later, Still Ain't Satisfied, edited by Margie Wolfe and Connie Guberman, Nos. 1-2, 206. Lequin, Lucie Un apprentissage demythifie, maitresses de maison, mattresses d'ecole, femmes, famille et education dans I'histoire du Quebec, par Nadia Fahny-Eid et Micheline Dumont, Nos . 1-2,222 . Luxton, Meg The Anti-Social Family, The Anti-Social Family, by Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh, Nos. 1-2, 187. Lilienfeld,Jane Woolf's Refusa, All that Summer She Was Mad. Virginia Woolf:: Female Victim of Medicine by Stephen Tremblay, Nos. l-2, 203. Manion, Eileen Mary Daly's Pure Lust, Pure Lust : Elemental Feminist Philosophy by Mary Daly, No. 3, 134. Payeur, Gaetane Un devenir qui se fait attendre, Devenirs de femmes, Nose 1-2, 233 .

Planink, Zdravko Two Finitudes, The End of History: An Essay on Modern Hegelianism by Barry Cooper and Voices in Time by Hugh MacLennan, No . 3, 117. Rayner, Jeremy The English Face of Ideology. The Modern Ideologies Series under the general editorship of B.N . Verki and Noel O'Sullivan, Socialism by R.N . Berki, Conservatism by Noel O'Sullivan, Liberalism by D.J. Manning, Feminism by John Charvet, Fascism by Noel O'Sullivan and Anarchism by David Miller, No. 3, 109. Read, Daphne Pornography : The Poetry of Oppression, Pornography and Science: Culture's Revenge Against Nature, No . 3, 182. Valverde, Mariana Contradictions in Material Feminism, The Grand Domestic Revolution by Dolores Hayden, No . 1-2, 191 . Vellacott, Jo Canadian Feminism, Feminism in Canada: From Pressure to Politics edited by Angela Miles and Geraldine Finn, Nos. I-2, 196. Verthuy, Mair Pot-Pourri Que c'est bete rna belle!Julia Bettinotti et Jocelyn Gagnon eds., Nos. 1-2, 224. Walti-Walters, Jennifer Penis/Phallus, Plus jamais l'amour eternel: Heloise san Abelard, par Marcelle Brisson, Nos. 12, 227. Walti-Walters, Jennifer La subversion par I'ecriture, FeminW, subversion, ecriture, Irene Pages et Suzanne Lamy, eds., Nos. 1-2, 230. Williamson, Janice Feminist Literary Criticism, Sexual Differences edited by Elizabeth Abel, Nos . 1-2, 210 .

Interview
Sontag, Susan An Interview with Susan Sontag, Eileen Manion and Sherry Simon, Nos. 1-2, 7.

Exchange
Knight, Graham and Kaite, Berkeley Fetishism and Pornography : Some Thought on the Pornographic Eye/I, No . 3, 64 .

Preface
Kroker, Marilouise and Arthur The Phallocentric Mood : "bored but hyper", Nos. 1-2, 5.

A CO

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A Critical University for Twenty-five Years DAS ARGUMENT and its ARGUMENTSONDERBANDE
Rethinking Marx Argument-Sonderband AS 109 (engl.) 202 p. 17,60 DM for students 14,60 DM (US$ 5,50) Contributions by Albers, Bidet, Cerutti, Gotten, Haug, Hirsch, Labica, Laclau, Mercier-Joss, Mouffe, Pasquineili, Sassoon, Sekutic, Wulff et al . Rethinking Ideology Argument-Sonderband AS 84 (engl.) 160 p. 17,60 DM for students 14,60 DM (US$ 5,50) Contributions by Cotten, Haug, Holzkamp, Kitamura, Laclau, Nemitz, Mouffe, PAcheux, Scherpe, Sharp, Therborn et al .

What is the situation of Marxism all over the world? What Is Itstheoretical capacity and political effectivity when It is confronted with the new problems of our times? What could be the form of communication and coherence among Marxists beyond dogmatisms and *naturally . shared beliefs? - *Rethinking Marx . presents an overview of the Marxist landscape today Including all currents and all continents . What is discussed In ideology theory a decade after Althusser's -Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses*? *Rethinking Ideology* brings together theoretical positions which seldom confront another directly in discussion . *Rethinking Marx- and -Rethinking Ideology- document contributions to international seminars held In West Berlin in 1982 and 1983. General distribution agency : Argument-Vertrieb, Tegeler StraSe 6, D-1000 Berlin (West) 65

ARGUMENT-VERLAG BERLIN

Socialist ~ Etudes Studies Socialirtes

-Are the Courts Progressive? -Views from Quebec

Critical Perspectives on the Constitution

-The Charier of Rights and Freedoms -Whose Constitution Is This? -Justice for Women and Native Peoples -Federalism and Representation -Referendum: Let the People Amend

Guest Editor : Robert Martin

Contributors :

Christine Boyle Pierre Beaulne Yves Bt31anger Charles Campbell Harry Glasbeek Louise Mandell Michael Mandel

Robert Martin Lynn McDonald Henry Milner Vincent di Norcia Norman Penner Gayle Raphanel Stuart Rush

Stanley Ryerson Gail Starr Garth Stevenson Janice Tait Reg Whitaker Norman Zlotkin

Discussion Section:

Julian Sher on the NEP

Price: $16.95 retail or from the publisher: Society for Socialist Studies, 471 University College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg R3T 2MB

"if we want to talk about social changes, then we are going to have to deal with what kind of psychology is needed to support people wanting, desiring to make these changes." -Dr. Fred Newman, "What Ever Happened to the Sexual Revolution?" *Psychotherapy in a Society in Crisis *Politics and Psychology "Training for the Progressive Practitioner
PRACTICE: The Journal ofPolitics, F .bononucs, Psychology, Sociology & Culture

7lieory and Practice, for aNewPsychology

Practice is published three times a year by the New York Institute for Social Therapy and Research

7 East 20th Street, New York NY 10003 (212-505-0170). Single issue, $5 .95; one year, $15. 'twenty percent discount on order of 15 or more. Institutional rate: one year, $25 .

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL-~ CULTURALSTUDIES I

A Journal of semiotics, cultural studies and communication studies .

Brecht on Film and Commodity Production ; Media Audiences; Aborigines and Film ; Parkinson, Hawke and Simulation ; Fashion and Gender ; Newsreading; Videoclips . Semiotics of Semiotics; Language, Discourse, Society; War Movies ; Prisons and Space; Azaria and Witch-hunting; Photography. Docker and Reflection Theory ; Bakhtin on Popular Humour ; Shakespeare in Education ; Wildlife Documentaries ; Import Culture; Video Games; Looking.

Vol . 2 :1 (1984)

Vol . 2 :2 (1984)

Vol . 3 :1 (1985)

Australian Journal of Cultural Studies School of English, W.A .I .T . Bentley, W.A . 6102

$15 a year (2 issues)

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A Newjournal from the University of Minnesota Cultural Critique will examine and critique received values, institutions, practices, and discoursesin terms of theireconomic, political, social, cultural, and aesthetic genealogies, constitutions and effects . The journal will encourage and solicit analyses utilizing various methodologies and combining different fields . FIRST ISSUE (Fall, 1985) Jiirgen Habermas Right and Violence-A German Trauma Luce Irigaray Is the Subject of Science Sexed? John Kadvany Verso andRecto: An Essay on Social Change Michael McKeon Generic Transformation and Social Change : Rethinking the Rise of the Novel Edward Said Orientalism Reconsidered William V. Spanos The Apollonian Investment of Modern Humanist Education . Cornet West The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual

Cultural Critique

Pamela McCallum Michelet's Narrative Practice : Populism, Marginality, and the Intellectual

Subscriptions: Check or money order (in U.S . dollars) should be made payable to Cultural Critique and sent to Telos Press, 431 East 12th St ., New York, N.Y . 10009-20% discount offered until Dec. 31, 1985 on all subscriptions listed below (three issues per year). Subscriptions outside U.S . and Canada : Add $3 postage per year : Individuals $15 (1 yr .) $30 (2 yr .) $45 (3 yr.) Institutions $30 (1 yr .) $60 (2 yr .) $90 (3 yr .)

Coming in April from Methuen Publications . . . Social Communication in Advertising

Persons, Products and Images of Well-Being By : William Leiss, Simon Fraser University Stephen Kline, York University and Sut Jhally, University of Massachusetts

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Regarded individually and superficially, advertisements promote goods and services . When subjected to closer scrutiny, however, advertising messages are seen to address and reflect our primary concerns : interpersonal and family relations, the sense of happiness and contentment, and sex role stereotyping, among others . Social Communication in Advertising is the first book to comprehensively examine the role of advertising in our society and the effect of advertising on our culture. It shows how advertising encompasses the most influential parts of our culture-industrial technology, popular culture and mass media-and argues that, in this century, advertising has become one of the greatest vehicles for social communication . Contents Include: Part One: Debates on Advertising and Society Part Two:

I/ Introduction ; 2/ Criticism of Advertising : 3/ Defences for Advertising

Advertising and Media 4/ Origins of the Consumer Culture : 5/ Advertising and the Development of Communications Media: 6/ Advertising and the Development of Agencies ; 7/ The Modern Advertising Agency

Part Three: The Theatre

325 pages $15.95 ISBN 485 99/70 8

of Consumption 8/ Two Approaches to the Study of Advertisements : 9/ The Structure of Advertisements : 10/ Goods as Satisfiers : II/ Goods as Communicators : 12/ Conclusions : Issues in Social Policy

Order Now through your local bookstore! Methuen Publications, 2330 Midland Avenue, Agincourt, Ontario MlS 1 P7

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Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory Revue canadienne de theorie politique et social The Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory is a refereed, interdisciplinary review published triannually - Winter, Spring-Summer and Fall . Annual Subscription Rates : Individuals, $15 .00 ; Students, $10 .00 ; Institutions, $25 .00 . Please add $3 .00 extra per year for postage outside of Canada . La Revue canadienne de theorie politique et sociale est une revue interdisciplinaire dont tout article publie est choisi par un jury de lecteurs independants. Elle est publie trois fois par an - en hiver, au printemps-6t6 et en automne . Abonnement annuel, $15 .00 ; etudiants, $10 .00 ; institutions, $25 .00 . Ajoutez $3 .00 de frais postaux pour abonnement a fetranger. Editorial and business correspondence should be sent to Professor Arthur Kroker, Department of Political Science, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St . West, Montreal, Quebec H4B 1M8 . Authors are requested to forward three copies of the manuscript and to provide self-addressed envelopes with correct postage. Footnotes should be assembled on separate sheets . / Toute correspondance doit etre adressee a professeur Arthur Kroker, Department de science politique, University Concordia, 7141 Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, Quebec H4f3 1M8 . On demande aux collaborateurs d'envoyer trois exemplaires de leur manuscript et de les accompagner d'une enveloppe timbree et adressee a 1'expediteur . Les notes doivent etre dactylographiees sur des feuilles separees a la fin de Particle . Corresponding address for Reviews / Adresse a laquelle il faut envoyer les comptes rendus : Marilouise Kroker, Review Co-ordinator CJPST, 7141 rue Sherbrooke O ., Montreal, Quebec H4B 1M8 . La Revue publie les manuscrits rediges en fran~ais ou en anglais .

THEORY

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9 . 5 d~P~ ~6 PST I NORTHROP FRYE : A VISION OF THE NEW WORLD CULTURE CRITIQUE : Fernand Dumont and New Quebec Sociology

CRITICAL w EXPLOflATIONS KEY THINKERS NEW_ . : . WORLD

TECHNOLOGY AND THE CANA0IAN MIND Innis/McLuban/Grant

Adam Ilroler